The Selma 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.
84° on Nov. 11, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1881. Next is 83° in 1900.
Selma’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 330 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Campbell Mountain, about 1,730 ft, 14 miles northeast.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 23 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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.
Selma has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 40° in December. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Selma normally reaches 65° and falls to 46°. The record high is 79°, in 1948; the record low 30°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.35 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1881 from the Fresno Area threaded record (Fresno Yosemite Int'L, 16 miles north-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.