The Benson 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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70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 68° in 1989.
Benson’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 2,170 ft, a difference of 1,370 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hamilton Mountain, about 3,250 ft, 12 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. 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.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 4 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 Benson reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of North Branch West Stony Creek, West Stony Creek, the Sacandaga and the Hudson: about 280 river miles.
Lake on the way: Great Sacandaga Lake.
230 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Benson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Benson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 60 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Benson normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 68°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Conklingville Dam, 18 miles east-northeast, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
