The Big Flats 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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14° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 14° in 2019.
Big Flats’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 880 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 870 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gobblers Knob, about 1,980 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Gardeau Formation (shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 17×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. 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.
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 Big Flats reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cuthrie Run, Sing Sing Creek, the Chemung and the Susquehanna: about 330 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
250 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Big Flats; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Big Flats has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Big Flats normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 1945; the record low 17°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Elmira Corning Regional Airport, 2 miles northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
