The Santa Ynez 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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4.92 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1952. The next wettest, 4.50 inches, fell in 1965.
Santa Ynez’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 440 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is McKinley Mountain, about 6,160 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
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 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 5×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, 16 to 48 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. 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. 5 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 Santa Ynez reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Zanja de Cota Creek and the Santa Ynez: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Ynez; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Ynez has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 33° in December. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Santa Ynez normally reaches 75° and falls to 38°. The record high is 93°, in 2021; the record low 31°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 3.26 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Cachuma Lake, 6 miles east-southeast, 180 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
