The Columbia 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1956.
Columbia’s center stands about 1,530 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,710 ft, a difference of 450 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Angel Hill, about 2,120 ft, 11 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Helderberg Group (limestone, dolostone), from the Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million 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. 6 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 Columbia reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Unadilla and the Susquehanna: about 470 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
360 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Columbia; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Columbia has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Columbia normally reaches 40° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Cooperstown, 16 miles south-southeast, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
