The Rancho Murieta 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. 17, 1961, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1856. Next is 27° in 1958.
Rancho Murieta’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 290 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is China Mountain, about 1,710 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Eocene nonmarine rocks, unit 1 (Northern and Central California) (sandstone), from the Eocene, 34 to 56 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 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 11 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Peridotite, serpentinite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 1,000 million years old. About 0.5 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 Rancho Murieta reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Cosumnes, the Mokelumne, the South Mokelumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 80 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rancho Murieta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rancho Murieta has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rancho Murieta normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 81°, in 2010; the record low 27°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1856 from the Sacramento Area threaded record (Sacramento Airport Asos, 22 miles west, 150 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
