The Orange Blossom 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.
80° on Nov. 12, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 80° in 1995.
Orange Blossom’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Barth Mountain, about 1,890 ft, 15 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 14×. 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, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 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.
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 Orange Blossom reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Stanislaus, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 120 river miles.
70 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orange Blossom; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orange Blossom has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orange Blossom normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 79°, in 1995; the record low 27°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.89 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Modesto Airport, 18 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.