The Franklin Lakes 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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76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1927.
Franklin Lakes’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bearfort Mountain, about 1,480 ft, 13 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Orange Mountain Basalt, from the Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 4 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 Franklin Lakes reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Ramapo, the Pompton and the Passaic: about 50 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Franklin Lakes; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Franklin Lakes has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Franklin Lakes normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1935.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlotteburg Reservoir, 11 miles west, 330 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
