The Nelson 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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11° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1993. Next is 12° in 1995.
Nelson’s center stands about 1,710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,840 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tower Hill, about 2,380 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
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 7 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.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Nelson reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Cowanesque, the Tioga, the Chemung and the Susquehanna: about 360 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
250 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Nelson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Nelson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 38 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Nelson normally reaches 48° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1999; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.67 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1993 at Cowanesque Dam, 7 miles east, 560 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
