X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Transverse Ranges


Monsoon

It pushes as far west as the Peninsular Ranges and Transverse Ranges of Southern California, but rarely reaches the coastal strip (a wall of desert thunderstorms only a half-hour's drive away is a common summer sight from the sunny skies along the coast during the monsoon).

Transverse Ranges

The Transverse Ranges represent a complex of tectonic forces and faulting stemming from the interaction of the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate along the San Andreas Fault system.

SR 18 and SR 38, none of these passes are at high elevations, with Cajon Pass being at a modest 4,190 ft (1,277 m) above mean sea level; this means that snow is less of a factor here than in the moderate to high mountain passes to the north like Donner Pass.


Pinus contorta

murrayana — Tamarack pine, or Sierra lodgepole pine; Cascade Ranges from Washington into Northern California, the Sierra Nevada, the Transverse Ranges of Southern California (including the San Bernardino Mountains), the Peninsular Ranges into northern Baja California, and the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada.

Sierran Arc

In addition, thick sequences (accumulations) of Mesozoic-age sedimentary rocks, mostly marine shales and sandstone of Jurassic and Cretaceous age, are locally preserved along the western side of the Peninsular Ranges and throughout the western Transverse Ranges in parts of the Santa Monica Mountains and mountainous Los Padres National Forest region north of Santa Barbara, California.

Tehachapi slender salamander

It is considered a threatened species in California, and is found only in isolated areas of the Piute and Tehachapi Mountains of the Transverse Ranges in Southern California.


see also