The Kinderhook 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.
74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1957. Next is 72° in 1964.
Kinderhook’s center stands about 270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 100 ft to 480 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pinnacle Point, about 1,960 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, conglomerate, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 6 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 Kinderhook reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Kinderhook Creek and the Hudson: about 130 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Kinderhook; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Kinderhook has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 31 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Kinderhook normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1957 at Hudson Correctional Facility, 11 miles south-southwest, 240 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.