The Moreno Valley plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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91° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 90° in 1949.
Moreno Valley’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 2,670 ft, a difference of 1,150 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Zanja Peak, about 3,520 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Moreno Valley reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the San Jacinto, Temescal Wash and the Santa Ana: about 90 river miles.
Often dry. About 60% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moreno Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moreno Valley has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Moreno Valley normally reaches 73° and falls to 41°. The record high is 91°, in 2021; the record low 30°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at March Afb, 3 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
