The Catskill 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.
74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 72° in 1964.
Catskill’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Dome, about 3,980 ft, 14 miles west-northwest.
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 6×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 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, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 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 Catskill reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hudson: about 120 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Catskill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Catskill 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 Catskill 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, 4 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.