The Erie 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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6° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1939. Next is 15° in 1942.
Erie’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 660 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Salina Group (evaporite, shale, dolostone), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 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 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Evaporite, shale, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 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.
Rain that falls on Erie runs only a short way, about 2 miles, to Lake Erie. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Erie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Erie has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 20° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Erie normally reaches 51° and falls to 34°. The record high is 68°, in 2011; the record low 15°, in 1942. The most rain on this date, 1.17 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1939 at Toledo Executive Airport, 16 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
