The Putnam 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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73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1973. Next is 69° in 2012.
Putnam’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,160 ft to 2,240 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Armenia Mountain, about 2,460 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lock Haven Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 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 Putnam reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Tioga, the Chemung and the Susquehanna: about 370 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 Putnam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Putnam has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 36 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1973 at Tioga Hammond Dam, 11 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
