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RANGES & PASSES

The terrain that steers every storm and every wind in the state.

RELIEF 14,787 FT, TOP TO BOTTOM

California holds both the highest and the lowest points in the contiguous United States, and they are 84 miles apart. Mount Whitney stands at 14,505 feet; Badwater Basin sits at 282 feet below sea level. Between them, in that eighty-four miles, the air crosses the Sierra crest, drops into the Owens Valley, crosses the Panamints and drops again — losing its moisture at each step.

That is the state in miniature. Almost everything distinctive about California weather is a range doing something to moving air, and almost every named wind is named after the gap it comes through. The tables below are ordered by what the terrain does, not by height.

The ten passes. Each is where air crosses a barrier — which is why each has a wind named after it.

Relief, range by range

HIGH POINT ABOVE SEA LEVEL

The ranges

TWELVE, ORDERED BY HIGH POINT
RangeHigh pointFeetTrendLength miRegion

The passes

A PASS IS A WIND FEATURE FIRST AND A ROAD SECOND

Ordered from sea level upward, which is also roughly the order of how much weather each one moves. The Golden Gate is the lowest pass in the table and by a wide margin the most consequential: it is the only sea-level break in six hundred miles of Coast Ranges, and the entire summer climate of northern California follows from it.

PassElevation ftCrossesWind regimeRegion
 Elevations are the summit of the pass. "Wind regime" is the named wind that uses it — see the wind regimes page.

The numbers that define the state

14,505ft Mount WhitneyHighest point in the contiguous US.
−282ft Badwater BasinLowest point in North America.
84mi Between themThe tightest high-to-low pairing in the country.
11,331ft Telescope Peak above Badwater The greatest relief between adjacent points in the lower 48.
840mi Of coastlineAlmost all of it facing a cold current.
10,800ft San Jacinto above Palm Springs In under seven horizontal miles — the steepest escarpment in the lower 48.