The Soledad 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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92° on Nov. 16, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 91° in 1933.
Soledad’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Palo Escrito Peak, about 4,450 ft, 9 miles west.
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 9 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.
Granodiorite, quartz-monzonite. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, dacite. Age: Late Oligocene to Early Miocene, 22 to 24 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. 3 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 Soledad reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Salinas: about 40 river miles.
Often dry. About 80% of the way is mapped as streams that run only after rain or snowmelt; the water makes the whole trip in floods.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Soledad; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Soledad has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Soledad normally reaches 70° and falls to 41°. The record high is 91°, in 1933; the record low 24°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at King City, 18 miles southeast, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
