The Wasco 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.
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
88° on Nov. 11, 1921, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1901. Next is 88° in 2016.
Wasco’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quaternary alluvium and marine deposits (coarse-detrital), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 52×. 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 to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 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.
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 Wasco reaches the Tulare Lake basin by way of Poso Creek: about 6 river miles. The Tulare Lake basin has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
A lake that comes back. The bed of Tulare Lake is farmland now; in very wet years it floods again.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wasco; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wasco has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 100° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 7 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wasco normally reaches 69° and falls to 44°. The record high is 86°, in 1941; the record low 24°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1928.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1901 at Wasco, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
