Golden State Weather Climate divisionsSouth Coast Drainage

South Coast Drainage

Southern California's coastal plains and ranges.

NCEI DIVISION6CALIFORNIA

Climate divisions are broad reporting areas. Golden State Weather's eighteen terrain regions nest inside them imperfectly but usefully: the division supplies the statewide frame, while the region explains which range, gap, basin or coastline makes one station differ from the next.

Transverse RangesThe only major east-west ranges on the West Coast, and the reason Southern California's weather is strange.MOUNTAINS3 PLACES South Coast & Los Angeles BasinA coastal plain with a 10,000-foot wall behind it — which is why the wind here blows the wrong way.COAST7 PLACES Channel IslandsEight islands sitting in the temperature gradient that drives the whole Southern California coast.COAST0 PLACES Peninsular RangesThe steepest escarpment in the lower 48, and a desert at the bottom of it.MOUNTAINS2 PLACES San Diego County & the BorderThree climates in sixty miles: semi-arid coast, mountain pine forest, and open desert.COAST3 PLACES

California map highlighting South Coast Drainage.

5 terrain regions, 15 stations. Atlas regions assigned to CA-6.

The atlas station sample

PRONOT AN AREAL AVERAGE

These figures summarize the named NOAA stations attached to this site's places inside the division. They are useful for comparing its internal spread, but they are not NCEI's official gridded or area-weighted divisional series. Mountains and cities are intentionally over-represented because this is a terrain atlas.

15Atlas stations

9.8–32.2″Annual precipitation

65.1–79.5°FJuly mean

13–6,752ftStation elevation

Atlas station sample; not an official area-weighted divisional series.
Place	Region	Elev ft	Jan mean	Jul mean	Annual precip	Snow	Nov–Apr share
Ojai	Transverse Ranges	745	50.2°	71.5°	20.7″	0.1″	92%
Santa Barbara	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	13	56.6°	68.3°	19.0″	—	92%
Big Bear Lake	Transverse Ranges	6,752	34.9°	65.1°	20.0″	58.6″	84%
Mount Wilson	Transverse Ranges	5,710	47.2°	74.3°	32.2″	—	90%
Burbank	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	778	56.1°	75.6°	13.9″	—	92%
Oxnard	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	52	56.1°	66.5°	12.9″	—	92%
Los Angeles	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	305	58.5°	73.3°	14.2″	—	92%
Riverside	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	837	56.4°	79.5°	10.0″	—	89%
Los Angeles (LAX)	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	125	57.8°	69.5°	12.2″	—	92%
Long Beach	South Coast & Los Angeles Basin	39	57.2°	73.2°	12.0″	—	92%
Idyllwild	Peninsular Ranges	5,413	43.0°	70.2°	24.4″	30.7″	84%
Escondido	San Diego County & the Border	660	56.8°	75.8°	14.5″	—	91%
Julian	Peninsular Ranges	4,226	45.8°	74.0°	24.5″	6.4″	88%
Mount Laguna	San Diego County & the Border	5,980	41.7°	71.2°	17.6″	—	83%
San Diego	San Diego County & the Border	62	58.4°	70.7°	9.8″	—	89%

The measured record for this division

NOAA computes an official area-weighted monthly series for every climate division, back to 1895. Our companion site carries all of it — the warming rate, the wettest and driest water years, the drought ledger and the ENSO correlation — on Golden State Climate. Free, ungated, and recomputed from NCEI's published tables.