The Santa Maria 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. 17, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 26° in 1938.
Santa Maria’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 380 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tepusquet Peak, about 3,230 ft, 14 miles east-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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Miocene, 16 to 18 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Santa Maria reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Maria: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Maria; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Maria has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Santa Maria normally reaches 70° and falls to 45°. The record high is 91°, in 2008; the record low 30°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.66 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 from the Santa Maria Area threaded record (Santa Maria Public Airport, 4 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
