The Northridge 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.
78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 73° in 1971.
Northridge’s center stands about 1,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 920 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is The Knobs, about 1,270 ft, 6 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cincinnati Group as used by Wickstrom (1990) (shale, dolostone, limestone), from the Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 56×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 434 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 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 Northridge reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Mad, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,570 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Northridge has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Northridge normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Springfield Water Treatment Plant, 2 miles southwest, 160 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.