The Madison 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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78° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 76° in 1973.
Madison’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 170 ft to 470 ft, a difference of 300 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Calais Mountain, about 1,120 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Boonton Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old.
The section below crosses 14 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 8 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 Madison reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Spring Garden Brook and the Passaic: about 55 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 55° and falls to 35°. The record high is 71°, in 1964; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.51 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 at Canoe Brook, 3 miles east-southeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
