The South El Monte 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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96° on Nov. 13, 1933, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1877. Next is 94° in 1900.
South El Monte’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 870 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Gabriel Peak, about 6,120 ft, 14 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 18 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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.
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 South El Monte reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Mission Creek, the Rio Hondo and the Los Angeles: about 25 river miles.
Often dry. About 40% 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 South El Monte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South El Monte has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in August; winter nights fall to about 48° in December. About 14 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 South El Monte normally reaches 73° and falls to 54°. The record high is 93°, in 1933; the record low 36°, in 1880. The most rain on this date, 1.33 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1877 from the Los Angeles Downtown Area threaded record (Los Angeles Downtown, 11 miles west, 130 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
