The Colton 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.
68° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 65° in 2011.
Colton’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 600 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 650 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Baldface Mountain, about 1,860 ft, 13 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undivided metasedimentary rock and related migmatite (metasedimentary, migmatite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Marble. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 3 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 Colton reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Raquette and the Saint Lawrence: about 45 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Colton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Colton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Colton 2 N, 2 miles north-northwest, 310 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.