The Tompkins 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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69° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1959. Next is 68° in 1964.
Tompkins’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 2,300 ft, a difference of 1,160 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Starkweather Hill, about 2,580 ft, 11 miles east.
The section below crosses 3 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, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.9 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 Tompkins reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cannonsville Reservoir, the West Branch Delaware and the Delaware: about 330 river miles.
Lake on the way: Cannonsville Reservoir.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tompkins; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tompkins has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tompkins normally reaches 50° and falls to 27°. The record high is 68°, in 1964; the record low 9°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.97 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1959 at Downsville Dam, 15 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
