The Sutter Creek 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.
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
3.95 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1943. The next wettest, 2.95 inches, fell in 1950.
Sutter Creek’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,790 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Round Mountain, about 3,480 ft, 14 miles northeast.
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 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 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. 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 Sutter Creek reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Sutter Creek, Dry Creek, the Mokelumne, the South Mokelumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 95 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Sutter Creek; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sutter Creek has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Sutter Hill Cdf, here, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
