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.
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5° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 9° in 2018.
Syracuse’s center stands about 910 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smithville Dolomite, Powell Dolomite, Cotter Dolomite, Jefferson City Dolomite (dolostone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 61×. 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: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 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 Otter Creek, the Lamine, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,430 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. About 36 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Syracuse normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 78°, in 2025; the record low 9°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.41 in, fell in 2020.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Sedalia Memorial Airport, 16 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
