The Searles Valley 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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7° on Nov. 11, 1993, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1920. Next is 21° in 1938.
Searles Valley’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,610 ft to 3,960 ft, a difference of 2,350 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Argus Peak, about 6,520 ft, 6 miles north-northwest.
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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 0.8 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 Searles Valley runs straight into Searles Lake. Searles Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Searles Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Searles Valley has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 107° in July; winter nights fall to about 34° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Searles Valley normally reaches 72° and falls to 42°. The record high is 85°, in 1995; the record low 24°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1946.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1920 at Trona, here, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
