The Oceanside 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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96° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 92° in 2008.
Oceanside’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 440 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burnt Mountain, about 2,090 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eocene marine rocks (mudstone, sandstone), from the Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Oceanside reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the San Luis Rey: about 6 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oceanside; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oceanside has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Oceanside normally reaches 72° and falls to 50°. The record high is 90°, in 2008; the record low 34°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Vista, 4 miles east, 190 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
