The Madison 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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72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 69° in 1956.
Madison’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,720 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Hunger, about 1,970 ft, 9 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marcellus Formation (black-shale), from the Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 3 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 Madison reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Oriskany Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 300 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Madison; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Madison has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Madison normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 1989; the record low 4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.09 in, fell in 1968.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Morrisville 6 SW, 12 miles west-southwest, 470 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
