The Ramona 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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26° on Nov. 14, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 28° in 1994.
Ramona’s center stands about 1,430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,360 ft to 2,080 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santa Ysabel Peak, about 4,730 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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 14 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene to Late Eocene, 34 to 48 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 Ramona reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Santa Maria Creek, Santa Ysabel Creek and the San Dieguito: about 35 river miles.
Often dry. About 70% 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 Ramona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ramona has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ramona normally reaches 73° and falls to 41°. The record high is 92°, in 2021; the record low 26°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 from the Ramona Area threaded record (Ramona Airport, 3 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
