The East Durham 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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73° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 72° in 2020.
East Durham’s center stands about 550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 1,300 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Dome, about 3,980 ft, 7 miles south.
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 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 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.
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 East Durham reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Catskill Creek and the Hudson: about 140 river miles.
110 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of East Durham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
East Durham has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 46 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 East Durham normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 66°, in 1964; the record low 8°, in 1971. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Alcove Dam, 11 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
