The Snelling 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
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Partly cloudy
22° on Nov. 15, 1905, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 24° in 1938.
Snelling’s center stands about 260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 420 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hunter Valley Mountain, about 2,660 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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Snelling reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Ingalsbe Slough, the Merced, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 160 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Snelling; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Snelling has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Snelling normally reaches 67° and falls to 41°. The record high is 81°, in 1933; the record low 25°, in 1938. The most rain on this date, 1.57 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Merced Area threaded record (Merced Municipal Airport, 17 miles south-southwest, 110 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
