The Norco 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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23° on Nov. 11, 1950, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 25° in 1958.
Norco’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santiago Peak, about 5,660 ft, 15 miles south.
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 6 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.3 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 Norco reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Temescal Wash and the Santa Ana: about 35 river miles.
Often dry. About 50% 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 Norco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Norco has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in August; winter nights fall to about 43° in December. About 9 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Norco normally reaches 75° and falls to 48°. The record high is 95°, in 1906; the record low 27°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Riverside Area threaded record (Riverside Municipal Airport, 7 miles east-northeast, 220 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
