The Vandenberg Village 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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90° on Nov. 16, 2008, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 89° in 1990.
Vandenberg Village’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 1,070 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sudden Peak, about 2,100 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Older Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Oligocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 34 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, mudstone. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 0.3 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 Vandenberg Village reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of the Santa Ynez: about 12 river miles.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Vandenberg Village; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vandenberg Village has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in September; winter nights fall to about 42° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Vandenberg Village normally reaches 70° and falls to 46°. The record high is 88°, in 2008; the record low 30°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 2.59 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Lompoc, 4 miles south, 320 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
