The Orangeburg 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.
17° on Nov. 15, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1946. Next is 18° in 1967.
Orangeburg’s center stands about 100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. Open water lies within three miles. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackie Jones Mountain, about 1,310 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Brunswick Formation (mudstone, sandstone, arkose), from the Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old.
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 16×. 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. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone, arkose. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian to Mesoproterozoic. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Pelitic-schist, gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Early Cambrian to Middle Ordovician, 459 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. 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 Orangeburg reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Sparkill Creek and the Hudson: about 30 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Orangeburg; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orangeburg has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 23° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orangeburg normally reaches 53° and falls to 37°. The record high is 71°, in 1993; the record low 20°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.92 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1946 at Westchester Co Airport, 12 miles east, 270 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.