The Adams Center 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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−7° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 5° in 1972.
Adams Center’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 820 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Underwood Hill, about 1,160 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Trenton Group (limestone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 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 Adams Center reaches Lake Ontario by way of Stony Creek: about 18 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Adams Center; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Adams Center has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Adams Center normally reaches 47° and falls to 30°. The record high is 68°, in 1994; the record low 13°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Watertown International Airport, 9 miles north, 330 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
