The Santa Anna 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
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.06 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1894. The next wettest, 2.95 inches, fell in 2001.
Santa Anna’s center stands about 1,730 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,600 ft to 1,910 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Santa Anna Mountains, about 1,970 ft, 1 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Santa Anna Branch Shale and Sedwick and Moran Formations, undivided (siltstone-mudstone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Santa Anna reaches the Gulf of America by way of Horse Creek, Home Creek and the Colorado: about 590 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Buchanan Lake, Lake Marble Falls and Lake Lyndon B Johnson.
320 miles of the trip are on the Colorado.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Santa Anna; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Santa Anna has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in January. About 28 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 2 inches of snow.
On November 14 Santa Anna normally reaches 69° and falls to 44°. The record high is 87°, in 1989; the record low 16°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 1.79 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Coleman, 8 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
