The Watchtower 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.
Watchtower’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 680 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is High Point, about 2,250 ft, 6 miles northwest.
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 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone, shale. Age: Silurian to Early Devonian, 394 to 428 million years old. About 0.3 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 Watchtower reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Shawangunk Kill and the Hudson: about 130 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watchtower; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watchtower 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 Watchtower 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, 20 miles east, 200 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
