The Valley Springs 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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3.95 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1943. The next wettest, 2.95 inches, fell in 1950.
Valley Springs’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,050 ft, a difference of 640 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Joaquin Peak, about 2,800 ft, 8 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Triassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 252 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Mafic-volcanic, greenstone. Age: Paleozoic to Mesozoic, 66 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Valley Springs reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Cosgrove Creek, the Calaveras, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 85 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Valley Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Valley Springs has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 39° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Sutter Hill Cdf, 13 miles north, 950 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
