The Tehama 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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87° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1933. Next is 86° in 2019.
Tehama’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 290 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dewitt Peak, about 2,050 ft, 13 miles northeast.
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 13×. 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.
Andesite. Age: Late Oligocene to Pleistocene, 2 to 24 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.
A raindrop that lands in Tehama reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of McClure Creek and the Sacramento: about 220 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tehama; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tehama has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in January. About 23 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tehama normally reaches 65° and falls to 43°. The record high is 87°, in 1995; the record low 25°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.39 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1933 at Red Bluff Municipal Airport, 11 miles northwest, 130 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
