The Carlton 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
10° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 12° in 1986.
Carlton’s center stands about 350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 260 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queenston Shale, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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 41×. 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 Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.3 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.
Rain that falls on Carlton runs only a short way, about 4 miles, to Lake Ontario. 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 Carlton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Carlton has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 67 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Carlton normally reaches 50° and falls to 33°. The record high is 71°, in 1994; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Albion, 7 miles south-southwest, 250 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
