The Rotterdam 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.
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74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 73° in 1928.
Rotterdam’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Filkin Hill, about 1,820 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Normanskill Shale, from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Graywacke, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million 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.
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 Rotterdam reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rotterdam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rotterdam 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 Rotterdam 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, 9 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
