The Running Springs 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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
74° on Nov. 14, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1960. Next is 70° in 2008.
Running Springs’s center stands about 5,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,570 ft to 7,210 ft, a difference of 3,640 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Anderson Peak, about 10,830 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Neoproterozoic to Carboniferous, 299 to 1,000 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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.
Running Springs straddles the rim of a basin with no outlet. Rain on the southwest side runs to the Pacific Ocean; most of the rest goes to the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of Deep Creek and the Mojave: about 130 river miles. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground. One that lands on the southwest side reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Fredalba Creek, Plunge Creek and the Santa Ana: about 80 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Running Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Running Springs has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in December. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 20 inches of water.
On November 14 Running Springs normally reaches 54° and falls to 28°. The record high is 74°, in 2021; the record low 8°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 1.00 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1960 at Big Bear Lake, 11 miles east-northeast, 760 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
