The Yosemite Valley 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
Chance of showers
Showers likely; cooler
Sunny
Showers likely
Showers likely
Chance of showers
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.
Yosemite Valley’s center stands about 4,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,970 ft to 8,200 ft, a difference of 4,230 ft: mountain country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Florence, about 12,430 ft, 14 miles east.
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 2×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 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.
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 Valley reaches San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean by way of 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 Yosemite Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Yosemite Valley 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 Yosemite Valley 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
