The Damascus 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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Mostly sunny; warmer
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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 70° in 1956.
Damascus’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 720 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Hickory, about 2,020 ft, 9 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catskill Formation (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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.
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 Damascus reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Sunny Brook, North Branch Calkins Creek and the Delaware: about 270 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Damascus; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Damascus has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Damascus normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 66°, in 1964; the record low 6°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1911.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Liberty 1 NE, 18 miles east-northeast, 770 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
