The Ridgecrest 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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86° on Nov. 11, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 86° in 1995.
Ridgecrest’s center stands about 2,300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,230 ft to 2,500 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 5,210 ft, 14 miles southwest.
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 11×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Argillite, chert, phyllite. Age: Cambrian to Jurassic, 145 to 542 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.
Ridgecrest has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 105° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in December. About 5 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ridgecrest normally reaches 70° and falls to 37°. The record high is 84°, in 2021; the record low 19°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 0.44 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at China Lake Naf, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
