The Brookhaven 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.
77° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1963. Next is 72° in 2022.
Brookhaven’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 110 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bald Hill, about 290 ft, 13 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Monmouth Group, Matawan Group and Magothy Formation (clay, sand, gravel), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, sand, gravel. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Brookhaven reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Carmans: about 8 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Brookhaven; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Brookhaven has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 32 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Brookhaven normally reaches 54° and falls to 38°. The record high is 69°, in 1980; the record low 19°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.61 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1963 from the Islip Area threaded record (Islip-Li Macarthur Airport, 10 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.