The Valley Center 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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26° on Nov. 14, 2000, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1974. Next is 28° in 1994.
Valley Center’s center stands about 1,310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,030 ft to 2,090 ft, a difference of 1,060 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Birch Hill, about 5,720 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 2 (Peninsular Ranges) (tonalite), from the Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 4×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Tonalite. Age: Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 175 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.4 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 Valley Center reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Keys Creek and the San Luis Rey: about 30 river miles.
Often dry. About 100% 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 Valley Center; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valley Center has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in August; winter nights fall to about 36° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Valley Center normally reaches 73° and falls to 41°. The record high is 92°, in 2021; the record low 26°, in 2000. The most rain on this date, 0.30 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1974 from the Ramona Area threaded record (Ramona Airport, 14 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
