The Barstow 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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73° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 73° in 1989.
Barstow’s center stands about 570 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 710 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Muscatatuck Group (limestone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, mudstone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 0.6 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 Barstow reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rock River and the Mississippi: about 1,470 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Barstow; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Barstow has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Barstow normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1971; the record low 10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.60 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Le Claire L&D 14, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
