The Preakness 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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13° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 14° in 1933.
Preakness’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 590 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Copperas Mountain, about 1,250 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Towaco Formation (sandstone, siltstone-mudstone), 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 18×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 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. 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 Preakness reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Preakness Brook, Naachpunkt Brook and the Passaic: about 35 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Preakness; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Preakness has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Preakness normally reaches 53° and falls to 33°. The record high is 80°, in 1931; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.10 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Boonton 1 SE, 9 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
