The Salinas 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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25° on Nov. 12, 1938, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1930. Next is 29° in 1931.
Salinas’s center stands about 50 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Toro, about 3,540 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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.
Plutonic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.3 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 Salinas reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Gabilan Creek, Alisal Slough and Elkhorn Slough: about 17 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salinas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salinas has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in September; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salinas normally reaches 68° and falls to 45°. The record high is 86°, in 2021; the record low 30°, in 1935. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1930 at Salinas Airport, 3 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
