The Jefferson 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 13, 2012, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1985. Next is 72° in 2002.
Jefferson’s center stands about 1,870 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,580 ft to 2,620 ft, a difference of 1,040 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Roundtop, about 3,450 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Unadilla, Laurens, New Lisbon, and Gilboa Formations (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.4 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 Jefferson reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Susquehanna: about 450 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Jefferson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jefferson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Jefferson normally reaches 50° and falls to 28°. The record high is 65°, in 2011; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1985 at Lansing Manor, 8 miles east-southeast, 760 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
