The Morgan Hill 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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3.84 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1908. The next wettest, 3.69 inches, fell in 1972.
Morgan Hill’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 780 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Copernicus Peak, about 4,330 ft, 15 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Morgan Hill reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Little Llagas Creek, Llagas Creek and the Pajaro: about 45 river miles.
Often dry. About 40% 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 Morgan Hill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Morgan Hill has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in September; winter nights fall to about 39° in December. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Morgan Hill normally reaches 68° and falls to 43°. The record high is 82°, in 1995; the record low 27°, in 1911. The most rain on this date, 2.12 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1908 at Watsonville Waterworks, 15 miles south-southwest, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
