The Washington 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.
Washington’s center stands about 630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 790 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ellsworth Hill, about 1,560 ft, 12 miles east.
The section below crosses 15 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.
Phyllite, schist, metagraywacke. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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. 9 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 Washington reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Brook, East Branch Wappinger Creek, Wappinger Creek and the Hudson: about 100 river miles.
70 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Washington; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Washington 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 Washington 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, 16 miles southwest, 480 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
