The Catharine 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
14° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 14° in 2019.
Catharine’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 1,230 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Connecticut Hill, about 2,140 ft, 8 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sonyea Group (shale, siltstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale. 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 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 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.
Catharine straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the west side runs to Lake Ontario; most of the rest goes to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cayuta Creek and the Susquehanna: about 330 river miles. One that lands on the west side reaches Lake Ontario by way of L'Hommedieu Creek, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 130 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
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 Catharine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Catharine 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 Catharine 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, 12 miles south-southwest, 250 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
