The Nevada City 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.
Partly cloudy
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Showers likely; cooler
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6.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1893. The next wettest, 5.60 inches, fell in 1950.
Nevada City’s center stands about 2,520 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,210 ft to 3,520 ft, a difference of 1,310 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Negro Jack Hill, about 4,660 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 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.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Argillite, phyllite. Age: Permian to Jurassic, 145 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Nevada City reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Deer Creek, the Yuba, the Feather and the Sacramento: about 140 river miles.
75 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nevada City; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nevada City has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. A normal year brings about 14 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 62 inches of water.
On November 14 Nevada City normally reaches 58° and falls to 40°. The record high is 83°, in 1933; the record low 18°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 2.90 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Nevada City, here, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
