The Little Falls 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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80° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1843. Next is 77° in 1973.
Little Falls’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 120 ft to 640 ft, a difference of 520 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stony Brook Mountains, about 970 ft, 12 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 16 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 3 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.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-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. 10 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 Little Falls reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Peckman and the Passaic: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Little Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Little Falls has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Little Falls normally reaches 56° and falls to 39°. The record high is 73°, in 1993; the record low 18°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.81 in, fell in 1871.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1843 from the Newark Area threaded record (Newark Liberty International Airport, 13 miles south, 380 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
