The Pleasanton 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. 17, 1961, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is 25° in 1978.
Pleasanton’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 1,450 ft, a difference of 1,170 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Discovery Peak, about 3,820 ft, 15 miles southeast.
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 6 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.6 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 Pleasanton reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Arroyo Valle, the Arroyo de la Laguna, Alameda Creek and Coyote Hills Slough: about 25 river miles.
Often dry. About 60% 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 Pleasanton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Pleasanton has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Pleasanton normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 85°, in 1906; the record low 26°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.02 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 at Livermore, 7 miles east, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
