The South Pasadena 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 Pasadena’s center stands about 670 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 420 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is San Gabriel Peak, about 6,120 ft, 9 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 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, less than 2.6 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartz-monzonite. Age: Late Triassic, 218 to 218 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 South Pasadena reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Los Angeles: about 15 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of South Pasadena; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Pasadena 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 Pasadena 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, 6 miles west-southwest, 290 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
