The Yermo 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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87° on Nov. 11, 1973, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1943. Next is 86° in 1989.
Yermo’s center stands about 1,930 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,880 ft to 3,380 ft, a difference of 1,500 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lane Mountain, about 4,500 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
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 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 7 mi of the line.
Hypabyssal-rhyolite. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Rhyolite, basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Argillite, chert, phyllite. Age: Cambrian to Jurassic, 145 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Rhyolite. Age: Early Miocene to Early Pliocene, 4 to 22 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Oligocene to Pleistocene, less than 34 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Yermo reaches the desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley by way of the Mojave: about 45 river miles. The desert basins of Owens Valley and Death Valley has no outlet to the sea: the water leaves only by evaporating or soaking into the ground.
Often dry. About 80% 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 Yermo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Yermo has a hot desert climate. Summer afternoons average 105° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in December. About 4 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Yermo normally reaches 70° and falls to 43°. The record high is 85°, in 1995; the record low 27°, in 1994. The most rain on this date, 0.56 in, fell in 1944.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1943 at Barstow-Daggett Airport, 4 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
