The Cairo 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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74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 72° in 1964.
Cairo’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 200 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 890 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hunter Mountain, about 4,040 ft, 15 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Plattekill and Ashokan Formations (shale, sandstone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
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 5×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cairo reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Shingle Kill, Catskill Creek and the Hudson: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cairo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cairo has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Cairo normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Hudson Correctional Facility, 11 miles east-southeast, 360 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
