The Syracuse 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
89° on Nov. 17, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 85° in 1989.
Syracuse’s center stands about 3,270 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 3,220 ft to 3,440 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune Sand, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 45×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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 Syracuse reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,650 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
750 miles of the trip are on the Arkansas.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Syracuse; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Syracuse has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 17 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 17 inches of water.
On November 14 Syracuse normally reaches 58° and falls to 25°. The record high is 80°, in 2025; the record low −4°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.48 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Syracuse 1 NE, 4 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
