The Princeton 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. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1865. Next is 77° in 1973.
Princeton’s center stands about 230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 50 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 350 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sourland Mountain, about 640 ft, 9 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone. Age: Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, 175 to 237 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Arkose. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 84 to 87 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Plutonic. Age: Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Siltstone-mudstone, sandstone-mudstone. 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. 5 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 Princeton reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Brook, the Millstone and the Raritan: about 50 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Princeton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Princeton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 27 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Princeton normally reaches 55° and falls to 37°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 16°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.89 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1865 from the Trenton Area threaded record (Trenton-Mercer Airport, 10 miles west-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
