The Clayton 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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−7° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 5° in 1972.
Clayton’s center stands about 280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Fox Hill, about 470 ft, 4 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potsdam Sandstone, from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Quartzite, mica-schist. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Clayton reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Saint Lawrence: about 95 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Saint Lawrence.
60 miles of the trip are on the Saint Lawrence.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Clayton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Clayton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Clayton normally reaches 47° and falls to 30°. The record high is 68°, in 1994; the record low 13°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Watertown International Airport, 17 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
