The Northampton 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 68° in 1989.
Northampton’s center stands about 760 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 760 ft to 890 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Three Ponds Mountain, about 3,010 ft, 14 miles northwest.
The section below crosses 11 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.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 5 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 Northampton reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Great Sacandaga Lake, the Sacandaga and the Hudson: about 250 river miles.
Lake on the way: Great Sacandaga Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Northampton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Northampton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 60 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Northampton normally reaches 46° and falls to 31°. The record high is 68°, in 1989; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.78 in, fell in 1988.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Conklingville Dam, 17 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
