The Ithaca 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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86° on Nov. 14, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1968. Next is 78° in 2012.
Ithaca’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Skunk Hill, about 1,350 ft, 8 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 54×. 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, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 24 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 Ithaca reaches the Gulf of America by way of Wahoo Creek, the Platte, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,800 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 Ithaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ithaca has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 87° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 20 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 30 inches of water.
On November 14 Ithaca normally reaches 51° and falls to 27°. The record high is 86°, in 1999; the record low 4°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1968 at Mead 6 S, 3 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
