The Susanville 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
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Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
71° on Nov. 13, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1896.
Susanville’s center stands about 4,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,130 ft to 5,350 ft, a difference of 1,220 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Thompson Peak, about 7,740 ft, 12 miles south-southeast.
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 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.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Andesite, basalt. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 million years old. About 3 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 Susanville reaches Honey Lake by way of the Jensen Slu and the Susan: about 25 river miles. Honey Lake has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Susanville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Susanville has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Susanville normally reaches 52° and falls to 28°. The record high is 68°, in 1995; the record low 1°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.58 in, fell in 1903.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Susanville 2 SW, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
