The Ithaca 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 72° in 1909.
Ithaca’s center stands about 400 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 910 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Connecticut Hill, about 2,140 ft, 9 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Genesee Group (shale), 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 12×. 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. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1.0 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 Ithaca reaches Lake Ontario by way of Cayuga Inlet, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 110 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 Ithaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ithaca has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 63 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Ithaca normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 9°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.83 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Ithaca Cornell University, 3 miles east, 560 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
