The Black River 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2012.
Black River’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Underwood Hill, about 1,160 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Black River Group (limestone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 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 Black River reaches Lake Ontario by way of the Black River: about 16 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 Black River; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Black River has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 116 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Black River normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 2009; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1936.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Watertown, 5 miles west-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
