The Yosemite Lakes 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Showers likely; cooler
Mostly sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Mostly sunny
21° on Nov. 16, 1958, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 23° in 2004.
Yosemite Lakes’s center stands about 1,250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,930 ft, a difference of 1,030 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Goat Mountain, about 4,960 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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 18 mi of the line.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Plutonic, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic to Late Cretaceous, 66 to 2,500 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Diorite, gabbro. Age: Triassic to Cretaceous, 66 to 252 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.1 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 Yosemite Lakes reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of Coarse Gold Creek, the Fresno, the Eastside Bypass, Sand Slough, Mariposa Slough, the San Joaquin and New York Slough: about 220 river miles.
140 miles of the trip are on the San Joaquin.
Often dry. About 30% 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 Yosemite Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Yosemite Lakes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 99° in July; winter nights fall to about 37° in December. About 15 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Yosemite Lakes normally reaches 67° and falls to 43°. The record high is 84°, in 1990; the record low 27°, in 1985. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1953.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Friant Government Camp, 14 miles south-southeast, 820 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
