The Santa Venetia 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 cloudy
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Partly cloudy
82° on Nov. 14, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 82° in 2010.
Santa Venetia’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 860 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tamalpais, about 2,570 ft, 6 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Franciscan Complex, unit 1 (Coast Ranges) (sandstone, mudstone), from the Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 5 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.
Rain that falls on Santa Venetia runs straight into San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Venetia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Venetia has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Santa Venetia normally reaches 65° and falls to 46°. The record high is 82°, in 2008; the record low 30°, in 1894. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at San Rafael-Civic Center, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
