The Prunedale 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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25° on Nov. 12, 1938, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 29° in 1931.
Prunedale’s center stands about 80 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from -10 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fremont Peak, about 3,080 ft, 9 miles east.
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 4 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.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, marble. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 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 Prunedale reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Alisal Slough and Elkhorn Slough: about 14 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Prunedale; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prunedale has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in September; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Prunedale normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 86°, in 2021; the record low 30°, in 1935. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Salinas Airport, 8 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
