The Stonyford 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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86° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 84° in 1932.
Stonyford’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,070 ft to 2,320 ft, a difference of 1,250 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snow Mountain East, about 7,030 ft, 11 miles west.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Greenstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous, 113 to 145 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 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 Stonyford reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Stony Creek and the Sacramento: about 250 river miles.
Lake on the way: Black Butte Lake.
180 miles of the trip are on the Sacramento.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Stonyford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Stonyford has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 33° in December. About 21 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Stonyford normally reaches 65° and falls to 38°. The record high is 86°, in 1995; the record low 20°, in 1929. The most rain on this date, 1.84 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 at Stony Gorge Reservoir, 15 miles north, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
