Qibla direction in Rancho Cucamonga

How to face the Qibla in Rancho Cucamonga

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards north and move a further 24.5° towards east: the result is the bearing of 24.5°. A small error of a few degrees is forgiven by most scholars, but aiming simply at north would leave you about 24° off.

Facing the Qibla is a condition of the prayer. Whoever prays inside the Sacred Mosque faces the Kaaba itself; whoever is far away, as in Rancho Cucamonga, faces its direction and makes a sincere effort to be accurate. A nearby mosque is a handy reference, because its prayer rows were aligned when it was built. Once you know the direction at home, a discreet mark on the wall saves you from checking again.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

This is a place where maps mislead badly: a straight line on a flat map from Rancho Cucamonga to Mecca points to 95.2° (east), a full 70.7° away from the true Qibla of 24.5° (north-east). The map line keeps one compass heading and is 2,110 km longer than the great-circle route. Because the Earth is a sphere, the shortest way to Mecca from Rancho Cucamonga first heads north-east, and that is the direction to face.

How is the figure of 24.5° obtained? From the coordinates of Rancho Cucamonga (34.1064° N, 117.5931° W) and of the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E), spherical trigonometry gives the starting bearing of the great circle joining them. Mosque architects and astronomical Qibla tables rely on exactly the same calculation.

Distance from Rancho Cucamonga to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 13,394 km from Rancho Cucamonga as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 13,071 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 16 h 15 min, although most pilgrims from Rancho Cucamonga connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Rancho Cucamonga run 11 hours behind Mecca in winter and 10 hours behind Mecca in summer, because of daylight saving time. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Rancho Cucamonga rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Rancho Cucamonga

From Rancho Cucamonga the sun never rises high in the Qibla direction of 24.5°, so you cannot simply face the sun. The opposite method works instead, as the right-hand column of the table shows.

On 365 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in January (31 days), for instance on 1 January 2027 at 13:27.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both happen at night in Rancho Cucamonga (02:18 and 02:27 local time), so they cannot be used here. Instead, on 13 January 2027 at 13:29 and 28 November 2027 at 13:09 the sun is over the point opposite the Kaaba, and every vertical shadow in Rancho Cucamonga points straight to Mecca.

Rancho Cucamonga compared with other cities

Compared with Washington D.C., 3,634 km away, the Qibla in Rancho Cucamonga is turned 32.1° further anticlockwise (24.5° against 56.6°), and Mecca is 2,761 km farther away. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Pomona (16 km), prays towards 24.4°, a difference of 0.1°.

Across the 244 cities in the United States on this site, the Qibla ranges from 17.2° in Hillsboro to 350.9° in Anchorage, a spread of 333.7°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for United States.

Qibla in cities near Rancho Cucamonga

• Pomona24.4° · 16 km
• Riverside24.7° · 25 km
• Corona24.6° · 26 km
• San Bernardino24.8° · 28 km
• Moreno Valley24.9° · 38 km
• El Monte24.1° · 40 km