The Gainesville 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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76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1952. Next is 69° in 2012.
Gainesville’s center stands about 1,620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,350 ft to 1,850 ft, a difference of 500 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Swift Hill, about 2,050 ft, 13 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Machias Formation (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 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, siltstone, sandstone. 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 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.5 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 Gainesville reaches Lake Ontario by way of East Koy Creek, Wiscoy Creek and the Genesee: about 110 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gainesville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gainesville has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 76° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 45 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Gainesville normally reaches 44° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.72 in, fell in 1992.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1952 at Warsaw 6 SW, 5 miles northwest, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
