The Novato 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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82° on Nov. 14, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 2010.
Novato’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tamalpais, about 2,570 ft, 13 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Franciscan schist (mica-schist), from the Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Melange. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 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.
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 Novato reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Novato Creek: about 5 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Novato; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Novato has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Novato normally reaches 65° and falls to 46°. The record high is 82°, in 2008; the record low 30°, in 1894. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at San Rafael-Civic Center, 8 miles south-southeast, 100 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
