The Cooperstown 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.
Showers likely
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74° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1956.
Cooperstown’s center stands about 1,280 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,950 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Mountain, about 2,370 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marcellus Formation (black-shale), from the Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 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 17×. 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 15 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 0.6 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 Cooperstown reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Otsego Lake and the Susquehanna: about 460 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lake Aldred and Otsego Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cooperstown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cooperstown 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 Cooperstown 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, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
