The Reedley 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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84° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1881. Next is 83° in 1900.
Reedley’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 370 ft, a difference of 60 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Mountain, about 3,390 ft, 14 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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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 17 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 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 Reedley reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of the Kings and the North Fork Kings: about 70 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
A lake that comes back. The bed of Tulare Lake is farmland now; in very wet years it floods again.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Reedley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Reedley has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Reedley normally reaches 65° and falls to 46°. The record high is 79°, in 1948; the record low 30°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1881 from the Fresno Area threaded record (Fresno Yosemite Int'L, 20 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
