The Watchung 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 1893. Next is 76° in 2020.
Watchung’s center stands about 220 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 70 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Calais Mountain, about 1,120 ft, 15 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 26×. 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, shale. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone-mudstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone-mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Clay, sand. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 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. 6 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 Watchung reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Stony Brook, Green Brook and the Raritan: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watchung; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watchung has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. A normal year brings about 29 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 50 inches of water.
On November 14 Watchung normally reaches 56° and falls to 36°. The record high is 72°, in 1955; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.81 in, fell in 1940.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the New Brunswick Area threaded record (New Brunswick 3 SE, 11 miles south, 110 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
