The Waterloo 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
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 14, 1995, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 2008.
Waterloo’s center stands about 60 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 40 ft to 90 ft, a difference of 50 ft: nearly flat ground. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Mountain, about 490 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Miocene to Pleistocene, less than 23 million years old. About 7 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 Waterloo reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the Calaveras, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 50 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Waterloo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterloo has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 96° in July; winter nights fall to about 38° in December. About 13 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Waterloo normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 79°, in 1995; the record low 29°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Stockton Area threaded record (Stockton Airport, 10 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
