The Esopus 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
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76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 73° in 1964.
Esopus’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 20 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Guyot Hill, about 1,290 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Austin Glen Formation (graywacke, shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite, schist. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Quartzite, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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. 2 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 Esopus reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Black Creek and the Hudson: about 90 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Esopus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Esopus 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 Esopus 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, 15 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
