The Alturas 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
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
94° on Nov. 11, 2013, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 91° in 2023.
Alturas’s center stands about 180 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 190 ft, a difference of 90 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Iron Mountain, about 330 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Reworked Cypresshead sediments (sand), from the Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 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 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.
Sand. Age: Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, less than 3.6 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, phosphorite. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Pliocene, 2.6 to 3.6 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 Alturas reaches the Gulf of America by way of Peace Creek and the Peace: about 120 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alturas; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alturas has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 49° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alturas normally reaches 79° and falls to 58°. The record high is 89°, in 2018; the record low 32°, in 1906. The most rain on this date, 2.46 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Bartow 1 SE, 7 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
