The Alpha plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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17° on Nov. 16, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 19° in 2019.
Alpha’s center stands about 330 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 550 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scotts Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 9 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beekmantown Group, Upper Part (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 9 smaller units along the line are not listed.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Alpha reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Pohatcong Creek and the Delaware: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alpha; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alpha has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Alpha normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 66°, in 2010; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Phillipsburg-Easton Bridge, 3 miles northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
