The South Whittier 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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95° on Nov. 12, 1974, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1958. Next is 95° in 2021.
South Whittier’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 510 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gilman Peak, about 1,660 ft, 15 miles east.
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 15×. 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 19 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 0.5 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 Whittier reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Coyote Creek and the San Gabriel: about 16 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 South Whittier; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
South Whittier has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in August; winter nights fall to about 46° in December. About 12 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 South Whittier normally reaches 73° and falls to 52°. The record high is 91°, in 2007; the record low 39°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 1.07 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1958 from the Long Beach Area threaded record (Long Beach Daugherty Airport, 11 miles southwest, 150 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
