The Ira 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
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1926. Next is 70° in 1928.
Ira’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Quack Hill, about 840 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Clinton Group (shale), from the Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 50×. 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: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 428 million years old. About 3 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 Ira reaches Lake Ontario by way of Sterling Valley Creek and Sterling Creek: about 20 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 Ira; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ira has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 140 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 43 inches of water.
On November 14 Ira normally reaches 48° and falls to 36°. The record high is 68°, in 1994; the record low 16°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1926 from the Oswego Area threaded record (Oswego, 16 miles north, 140 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
