The Utica 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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85° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 2025.
Utica’s center stands about 1,600 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,570 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 40 ft: nearly flat ground.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dakota Group (sandstone, shale), from the Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 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 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.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 7 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 Utica reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Fork Big Blue, the Big Blue, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,910 river miles.
Lake on the way: Tuttle Creek Lake.
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 Utica; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Utica has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Utica normally reaches 50° and falls to 27°. The record high is 73°, in 2025; the record low −3°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1926.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Seward, 13 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
