The Fords 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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79° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 76° in 2020.
Fords’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 180 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Todt Hill, about 460 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Raritan Formation (clay, sand), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 38×. 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, shale. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 0.4 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Fords reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Branch Rahway and the Rahway: about 12 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fords; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fords has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Fords normally reaches 56° and falls to 36°. The record high is 72°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the New Brunswick Area threaded record (New Brunswick 3 SE, 7 miles southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
