The Sunol 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.
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
34° on Nov. 14, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 35° in 2024.
Sunol’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 1,880 ft, a difference of 1,680 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 3,910 ft, 15 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plio-Pleistocene and Pliocene loosely consolidated deposits (sandstone, conglomerate), from the Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 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 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Jurassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gabbro. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Serpentinite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 175 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. 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 Sunol reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Alameda Creek and Coyote Hills Slough: about 17 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 Sunol; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sunol has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 42° in January. About 16 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sunol normally reaches 65° and falls to 46°. The record high is 79°, in 2010; the record low 34°, in 2022. The most rain on this date, 0.51 in, fell in 2006.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Fremont, 8 miles west-southwest, 230 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
