The Houghton 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.
Chance of showers
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Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
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Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 1902.
Houghton’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,180 ft to 1,810 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Jackson Hill, about 2,290 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 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 18×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 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 Houghton reaches Lake Ontario by way of 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 Houghton; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Houghton has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Houghton normally reaches 48° and falls to 29°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low −2°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Angelica, 10 miles southeast, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
