The Western 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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70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 66° in 1956.
Western’s center stands about 1,230 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 1,400 ft, a difference of 840 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Penn Mountain, about 1,860 ft, 8 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pulaski and Whetstone Gulf Formations (siltstone, shale), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 0.7 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 Western reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 300 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Western; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Western has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 164 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Western normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 61°, in 2010; the record low −1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Boonville 4 SSW, 6 miles north-northeast, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
