The Petaluma 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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91° on Nov. 17, 1932, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 1923.
Petaluma’s center stands about 18 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 500 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Veeder, about 2,670 ft, 14 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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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.
Dacite. Age: Late Miocene to Late Pliocene, 3 to 7 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Early Cretaceous, 110 to 143 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Andesite, dacite. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 9.5 to 13 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 Petaluma reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Petaluma: about 13 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Petaluma; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Petaluma has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in September; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 26 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Petaluma normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 83°, in 2010; the record low 20°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.77 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Petaluma Airport, 2 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
