The Rancho Palos Verdes 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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4.41 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1932. The next wettest, 3.37 inches, fell in 1946.
Rancho Palos Verdes’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 1,360 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Pedro Hill, about 1,480 ft, 3 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tertiary intrusive rocks (hypabyssal), unit 5 (Southern California Basin) (hypabyssal-basalt), from the Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 25 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 15×. 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, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Hypabyssal-basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 8 to 25 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Schist, metasedimentary. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 95 to 112 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.9 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.
Rain that falls on Rancho Palos Verdes runs straight into the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rancho Palos Verdes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rancho Palos Verdes has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in December. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rancho Palos Verdes normally reaches 71° and falls to 51°. The record high is 93°, in 1949; the record low 35°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1932 at Torrance Airport, 5 miles north-northeast, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
