The Santa Monica 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.
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Chance of showers; cooler
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
31° on Nov. 14, 2018, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 36° in 2019.
Santa Monica’s center stands about 17 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 10 ft to 20 ft, a difference of 10 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows In Rio Grande delta area, clay veneer over meanderbelt sand (fine-detrital, sand), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, silt. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 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.
Santa Monica has a hot semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in August; winter nights fall to about 50° in January. About 24 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Santa Monica normally reaches 80° and falls to 58°. The record high is 92°, in 2020; the record low 31°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.11 in, fell in 2019.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Harlingen Rio Grande Valley International Airport, 10 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
