The Plainfield 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.
Showers likely
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74° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1956.
Plainfield’s center stands about 1,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Angel Hill, about 2,120 ft, 6 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Panther Mountain Formation (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 22×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 0.6 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 Plainfield reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Unadilla and the Susquehanna: about 450 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
360 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Plainfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plainfield has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Plainfield normally reaches 40° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Cooperstown, 16 miles east-southeast, 450 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
