The Bethlehem 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Bethlehem’s center stands about 860 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 300 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scotts Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 8 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Quartz-Oligoclase Gneiss, from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 19×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone-mudstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Late Jurassic, 145 to 164 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 Bethlehem reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mulhockaway Creek, the South Branch Raritan and the Raritan: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Bethlehem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Bethlehem has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Bethlehem normally reaches 53° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1964; the record low 11°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Belvidere Area threaded record (Belvidere Bridge, 12 miles north-northwest, 600 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
