The Fayette 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 71° in 1989.
Fayette’s center stands about 610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 730 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bennett Hill, about 1,220 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Skaneateles Formation (shale), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 25×. 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: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 0.8 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 Fayette reaches Lake Ontario by way of Silver Creek, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 85 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Cayuga Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Fayette; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Fayette has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 57 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Fayette normally reaches 47° and falls to 32°. The record high is 65°, in 2005; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.62 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1969 at Geneva Research Farm, 12 miles west-northwest, 110 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
