The Sierra Village 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 sunny
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
6.70 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1955. The next wettest, 6.13 inches, fell in 2017.
Sierra Village’s center stands about 4,880 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,180 ft to 5,310 ft, a difference of 2,130 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bell Mountain, about 7,970 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tertiary pyroclastic and volcanic mudflow deposits, unit 9 (Cascade Range) (andesite), from the Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone, marble. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 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 Sierra Village reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Sugarpine Creek, the North Fork Tuolumne, the Tuolumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Don Pedro Reservoir.
80 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sierra Village; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sierra Village has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 31° in January. A normal year brings about 108 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Sierra Village normally reaches 58° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1995; the record low 13°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 4.10 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Cherry Valley Dam, 16 miles east-southeast, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
