The Cornwall 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.
76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 73° in 1964.
Cornwall’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 1,240 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Beacon Mountain, about 1,580 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial and Alluvial Deposits (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Carbonate. Age: Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 542 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Cornwall reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Moodna Creek and the Hudson: about 65 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cornwall; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cornwall has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Cornwall normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1973; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Poughkeepsie Area threaded record (Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley Regional Airport, 17 miles north-northeast, 160 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.