The Washington 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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
75° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Washington’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scotts Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 14 miles west.
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 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.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Cambrian, 497 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Washington reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the South Branch Raritan and the Raritan: about 70 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Washington normally reaches 53° and falls to 30°. The record high is 72°, in 1964; the record low 11°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Belvidere Area threaded record (Belvidere Bridge, 15 miles west-northwest, 790 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
