The Independence 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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75° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Independence’s center stands about 530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 1,160 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Tammany, about 1,530 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
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.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Slate, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Syenite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million 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 Independence reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Pequest and the Delaware: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Independence; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Independence 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 Independence 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, 11 miles west-southwest, 270 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
