The Palmer 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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17° on Nov. 16, 2022, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 19° in 2019.
Palmer’s center stands about 410 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 190 ft to 460 ft, a difference of 270 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Scotts Mountain, about 1,290 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Allentown Formation (dolostone, limestone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 18 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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, slate. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Precambrian. 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. 12 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 Palmer reaches Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Delaware: about 160 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Palmer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Palmer has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Palmer normally reaches 54° and falls to 33°. The record high is 66°, in 2010; the record low 19°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.43 in, fell in 2008.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Phillipsburg-Easton Bridge, 3 miles east, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
