The San Juan Bautista 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
86° on Nov. 12, 1990, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 86° in 1995.
San Juan Bautista’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 1,150 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Harlan, about 3,280 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic gabbroic rocks, unit 2 (undivided) (diorite, gabbro), from the Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Greenstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 San Juan Bautista reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Pajaro: about 25 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of San Juan Bautista; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
San Juan Bautista has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in August; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 San Juan Bautista normally reaches 67° and falls to 42°. The record high is 81°, in 1992; the record low 30°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 2.00 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Hollister 2, 6 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
