The Val Verde 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.
94° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 92° in 2008.
Val Verde’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 2,030 ft, a difference of 1,150 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Whiteacre Peak, about 5,030 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
The section below crosses 8 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.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Paleocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 66 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Miocene, 5.3 to 2,500 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 smaller units 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 Val Verde reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Clara: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Val Verde; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Val Verde has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Van Nuys Airport, 19 miles south-southeast, 420 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.