The Mechanicstown 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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75° on Nov. 16, 1928, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1880. Next is 75° in 1993.
Mechanicstown’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Schunnemunk Mountain, about 1,540 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
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 17×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 0.8 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 Mechanicstown reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Masonic Creek and the Hudson: about 150 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Mechanicstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Mechanicstown has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 Mechanicstown normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 71°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.40 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1880 at Port Jervis, 16 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
