The Taft Heights 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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19° on Nov. 13, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 20° in 1975.
Taft Heights’s center stands about 1,180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 2,080 ft, a difference of 1,350 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Midway Peak, about 3,640 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 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.
Taft Heights has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 95° in July; winter nights fall to about 32° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Taft Heights normally reaches 68° and falls to 36°. The record high is 88°, in 1995; the record low 26°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.18 in, fell in 2025.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 at New Cuyama Fire Station, 18 miles southwest, 980 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
