The Jamaica 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1940. Next is 65° in 2022.
Jamaica’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 2,010 ft, a difference of 1,410 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stratton Mountain, about 3,940 ft, 7 miles west.
The section below crosses 15 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Paragneiss, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.3 to 1.3 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 938 to 960 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Paragneiss, pegmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.2 to 1.3 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Aplite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.3 to 1.4 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Granofels, quartzite. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 9 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 Jamaica reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Ball Mountain Brook, the West River and the Connecticut: about 180 river miles.
150 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Jamaica; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Jamaica has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1940 at Peru, 13 miles north-northwest, 960 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
