The West Milford 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.
76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1927.
West Milford’s center stands about 700 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,440 ft, a difference of 1,000 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Taylor Mountain, about 1,510 ft, 5 miles north.
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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. 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. 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 West Milford reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Belcher Creek, the Pequannock, the Pompton and the Passaic: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Milford; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Milford has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 West Milford normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1935.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlotteburg Reservoir, 8 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.