The Richgrove 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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Chance of showers; cooler
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88° on Nov. 11, 1921, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 88° in 2016.
Richgrove’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 600 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Isham Hill, about 2,160 ft, 15 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Richgrove has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Richgrove normally reaches 69° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 1941; the record low 24°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Wasco, 20 miles southwest, 220 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
