The Suffern 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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76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1927.
Suffern’s center stands about 370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 1,040 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Taylor Mountain, about 1,510 ft, 13 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hammer Creek Formation (conglomerate), 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.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate, sandstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Early Jurassic to Late Jurassic, 145 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 Suffern reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mahwah, the Ramapo, the Pompton and the Passaic: about 60 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Suffern; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Suffern has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Suffern normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1935.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlotteburg Reservoir, 16 miles west-southwest, 410 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
