The Danby 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.
75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 1909.
Danby’s center stands about 1,240 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 830 ft to 1,750 ft, a difference of 920 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Connecticut Hill, about 2,140 ft, 10 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Sonyea Group (shale, siltstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million 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.
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.
Danby straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northwest side runs to Lake Ontario; most of the rest goes to Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Michigan Creek, Catatonk Creek, Owego Creek and the Susquehanna: about 340 river miles. One that lands on the northwest side reaches Lake Ontario by way of Cayuga Inlet, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 120 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
270 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Danby; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Danby has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 63 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Danby normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 9°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ithaca Cornell University, 7 miles north-northeast, 280 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.