The Vista 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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96° on Nov. 12, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 92° in 2008.
Vista’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 920 ft, a difference of 700 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pala Mountain, about 2,100 ft, 15 miles 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 10×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone. Age: Paleocene to Oligocene, 23 to 66 million years old. About 5 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 1 mi of the line.
Argillite. Age: Paleozoic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, mafic-volcanic. Age: Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, 100 to 164 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 Vista reaches the Pacific Ocean by way of Buena Vista Creek: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Vista; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vista has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Vista normally reaches 72° and falls to 50°. The record high is 90°, in 2008; the record low 34°, in 1964. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Vista, 3 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
