The Nassau 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 1874. Next is 73° in 1928.
Nassau’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 350 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Rounds Mountain, about 2,240 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Nassau Formation (shale), from the Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 11×. 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: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, conglomerate, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 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.
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 Nassau reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Valatie Kill, Kinderhook Creek and the Hudson: about 150 river miles.
120 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nassau; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nassau 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 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Nassau normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 1973; the record low 12°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.79 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1874 from the Albany Area threaded record (Albany International Airport, 19 miles north-northwest, 130 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.