The Alexander 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1911. Next is 73° in 2012.
Alexander’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 910 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kingsley Knoll, about 1,700 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Moscow Formation (shale), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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. 6 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Alexander reaches Lake Ontario by way of Tonawanda Creek and the Niagara: about 100 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
75 miles of the trip are on Tonawanda Creek.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Alexander; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Alexander has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 74 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 37 inches of water.
On November 14 Alexander normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 69°, in 1994; the record low 8°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1911 at Batavia, 10 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
