The Burns 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.
Chance of showers
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80° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1917. Next is 76° in 1956.
Burns’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,900 ft, a difference of 810 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jericho Hill, about 2,380 ft, 14 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Nunda Formation (sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 12×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.8 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.
Burns straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the east side runs to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; most of the rest goes to Lake Ontario.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Ontario by way of Slader Creek, Canaseraga Creek and the Genesee: about 100 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the east side reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Tioga, the Chemung and the Susquehanna: about 390 river miles.
65 miles of the trip are on the Genesee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Burns; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Burns has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 36 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 31 inches of water.
On November 14 Burns normally reaches 51° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1961; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.80 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1917 at Dansville, 9 miles north, 540 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
