The San Diego 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.
Chance of showers
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
30° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 33° in 1950.
San Diego’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 280 ft to 360 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lissie Formation (silt, sand, clay), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 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 60×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt, sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Clay, sandstone. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 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 San Diego reaches the Gulf of America by way of San Diego Creek and San Fernando Creek: about 55 river miles.
Often dry. About 40% 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 San Diego; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
San Diego has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 98° in August; winter nights fall to about 45° in January. About 29 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 San Diego normally reaches 78° and falls to 54°. The record high is 93°, in 2020; the record low 30°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 4.44 in, fell in 2001.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Alice International Airport, 13 miles east, 140 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
