The Vassar College 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 1931. Next is 73° in 1964.
Vassar College’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 30 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 460 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is South Beacon Mountain, about 1,580 ft, 14 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Normanskill Formation (shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Argillite, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 3 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 Vassar College reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Casper Creek and the Hudson: about 80 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Vassar College; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Vassar College has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Vassar College normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1973; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Poughkeepsie Area threaded record (Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley Regional Airport, 4 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
