The Central Square 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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73° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1902. Next is 73° in 2012.
Central Square’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 520 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mud Hill, about 800 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clinton Group (shale), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 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 56×. 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 to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million 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.
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 Central Square reaches Lake Ontario by way of Little Bay Creek, the Oneida and the Oswego: about 45 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Oneida Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Central Square; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Central Square has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 128 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Central Square normally reaches 49° and falls to 33°. The record high is 72°, in 1994; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1995.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 from the Syracuse Area threaded record (Syracuse Hancock International Airport, 12 miles south). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
