The Plainsboro 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 1891. Next is 77° in 2020.
Plainsboro’s center stands about 90 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 170 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sourland Mountain, about 640 ft, 11 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 87 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, sandstone-mudstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 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. 7 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 Plainsboro reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Devils Brook, the Millstone and the Raritan: about 45 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Plainsboro; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plainsboro has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Plainsboro normally reaches 56° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1959; the record low 15°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.89 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Hightstown 2 W, 5 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
