The Highland 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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76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 73° in 1964.
Highland’s center stands about 240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 990 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Millbrook Mountain, about 1,640 ft, 14 miles west.
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 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. 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 11 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.
Schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 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. 4 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 Highland reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hudson: about 80 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Highland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Highland 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 Highland 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, 8 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
