The Gorham 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1969. Next is 71° in 1989.
Gorham’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 870 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 230 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stid Hill, about 2,110 ft, 13 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Tully Limestone, from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 1 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Gorham reaches Lake Ontario by way of the West River, the Canandaigua Outlet, the Erie Canal, the Clyde, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 160 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Canandaigua Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Gorham; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Gorham 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 Gorham 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, 7 miles northeast, 180 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
