The Castorland 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 1891. Next is 69° in 1964.
Castorland’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,140 ft, a difference of 420 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beech Hill, about 1,200 ft, 9 miles east-southeast.
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 9 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.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 3 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 Castorland reaches Lake Ontario by way of Negro Creek and the Black River: about 45 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 Castorland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Castorland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 127 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Castorland normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 65°, in 1930; the record low 1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Lowville, 7 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
