The Cato 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 72° in 1902.
Cato’s center stands about 440 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 560 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baker Hill, about 1,130 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Vernon Formation (shale), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone, dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 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. 4 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 Cato reaches Lake Ontario by way of Muskrat Creek, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 60 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 Cato; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cato has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 109 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Cato normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1902; the record low 8°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1901.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Auburn, 13 miles south, 330 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
