The Shokan 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
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 70° in 1909.
Shokan’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 510 ft to 2,190 ft, a difference of 1,680 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Slide Mountain, about 4,180 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moscow Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. 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, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Shokan reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Ashokan Reservoir, Esopus Creek and the Hudson: about 140 river miles.
Lake on the way: Ashokan Reservoir.
100 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Shokan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Shokan has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Shokan normally reaches 49° and falls to 35°. The record high is 67°, in 1909; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.95 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Mohonk Lake, 14 miles south-southeast, 360 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
