The Thornton 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
Showers likely
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
26° on Nov. 17, 1961, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1856. Next is 27° in 1958.
Thornton’s center stands about 13 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 40 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
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.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 24 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 Thornton reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the South Mokelumne, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 40 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thornton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thornton has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Thornton normally reaches 66° and falls to 43°. The record high is 81°, in 2010; the record low 27°, in 1978. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1963.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1856 from the Sacramento Area threaded record (Sacramento Airport Asos, 19 miles north). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
