The Wawona 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
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Partly cloudy
6.30 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1905. The next wettest, 6.28 inches, fell in 1942.
Wawona’s center stands about 4,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,960 ft to 6,990 ft, a difference of 3,030 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gale Peak, about 10,580 ft, 15 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mesozoic granitic rocks, unit 3 (Sierra Nevada, Death Valley area, Northern Mojave Desert and Transverse Ranges) (granodiorite), from the Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 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 3×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granodiorite. Age: Permian to Tertiary, 2.6 to 260 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Argillite, quartzite, phyllite. Age: Ordovician to Triassic, 202 to 487 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.
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 Wawona reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of the South Fork Merced, the Merced, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 240 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake McClure.
120 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wawona; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wawona has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 28° in December. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wawona normally reaches 57° and falls to 33°. The record high is 77°, in 1926; the record low 14°, in 1915. The most rain on this date, 3.20 in, fell in 1981.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 at Yosemite Park Headquarters, 15 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
