The Thiells 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.
77° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1950. Next is 69° in 2022.
Thiells’s center stands about 310 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 1,140 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Schunnemunk Mountain, about 1,540 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 12 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.
Granite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Mudstone, sandstone, arkose. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Triassic, 202 to 237 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Jurassic, 175 to 202 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, hornblende-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. 6 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 Thiells reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hudson: about 40 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Thiells; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Thiells has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Thiells normally reaches 53° and falls to 32°. The record high is 68°, in 1964; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.18 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1950 at Shrub Oak, 13 miles northeast, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.