The Plattekill 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is 73° in 1964.
Plattekill’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 450 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 510 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Murray Hill, about 2,020 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Normanskill Formation (shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 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.
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 Plattekill reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Quassaic Creek and the Hudson: about 75 river miles.
60 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Plattekill; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Plattekill has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Plattekill normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1973; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Poughkeepsie Area threaded record (Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley Regional Airport, 10 miles east, 440 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
