The San Marino 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
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Sunny
Chance of showers
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
95° on Nov. 14, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 95° in 2021.
San Marino’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 930 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Gabriel Peak, about 6,120 ft, 8 miles north.
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 8 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Late Triassic, 218 to 218 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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. 2 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 Marino reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Alhambra Wash, the Rio Hondo and the Los Angeles: about 30 river miles.
Often dry. About 50% 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 San Marino; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
San Marino has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 20 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 San Marino normally reaches 75° and falls to 50°. The record high is 95°, in 2016; the record low 29°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.30 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Pasadena, 3 miles northwest, 290 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
