The Cherry Valley 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.
74° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1956.
Cherry Valley’s center stands about 1,360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,110 ft to 2,200 ft, a difference of 1,090 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Mountain, about 2,370 ft, 11 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Onondaga Limestone (shale), from the Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 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 11×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 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 Cherry Valley reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cherry Valley Creek and the Susquehanna: about 480 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
400 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cherry Valley; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cherry Valley has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Cherry Valley normally reaches 40° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Cooperstown, 10 miles west-southwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.