The Cortland 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. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 67° in 2012.
Cortland’s center stands about 1,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,090 ft to 1,700 ft, a difference of 610 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Virgil Mountain, about 2,130 ft, 8 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Genesee Group (shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 16×. 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 Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 0.3 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 Cortland reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the West Branch Tioughnioga, the Tioughnioga, the Chenango and the Susquehanna: about 390 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
290 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cortland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cortland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Freeville 1 NE, 10 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
