The Cayuga 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.
Cayuga’s center stands about 470 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 Cottle Hill, about 1,000 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Camillus and Syracuse Formations (shale), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 23×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 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. 2 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 Cayuga reaches Lake Ontario by way of Cayuga Lake, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 75 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Cayuga Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cayuga; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cayuga 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 Cayuga 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, 9 miles east, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
