The Sierra Azul is a mountain range in

Santa Clara County Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259 as of the 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring San Benito County form the ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is the southern half of the

Santa Cruz Mountains The Santa Cruz Mountains ( Mutsun Ohlone: Mak-sah-re-jah, "Sharp Ridged Mountain of the Eagle" or "People of the Eagle Mountain") are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States, constituting a part of the Pacific Coast R ...

range, which is divided into two parts by California Highway 17 into what the colonizing Spanish called the

Sierra Morena The Sierra Morena is one of the main systems of mountain ranges in Spain. It stretches for 450 kilometres from east to west across the south of the Iberian Peninsula, forming the southern border of the ''Meseta Central'' plateau and providi ...

or "Brown Mountains" to the north and the Sierra Azul or "Blue Mountains" to the south. Part of the range is within the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The highest peak is Mount Umunhum, the site of the former

Almaden Air Force Station Mount Umunhum ( ) is a peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, located in Santa Clara County, California. It is the fourth-highest peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, after Loma Prieta, Crystal Peak, and Mount Chual. Most of the mountain is located ...

radar site and the current location of a

NEXRAD NEXRAD or Nexrad (Next-Generation Radar) is a network of 159 high-resolution S-band pulse-Doppler radar, Doppler weather radars operated by the National Weather Service (NWS), an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ...

weather radar of the

National Weather Service The National Weather Service (NWS) is an Government agency, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that is tasked with providing weather forecasts, warnings of hazardous weather, and other weathe ...

which serves the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

and Monterey Bay Area.

References

External links

Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve website
— ''part of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District system''. Santa Cruz Mountains Mountain ranges of Santa Clara County, California Mountain ranges of the San Francisco Bay Area Mountain ranges of Northern California {{SantaClaraCountyCA-geo-stub