The Lake Delta 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 69° in 1948.
Lake Delta’s center stands about 590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 480 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Penn Mountain, about 1,860 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Utica Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 0.6 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.
Lake Delta straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northeast side runs to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean; most of the rest goes to Lake Ontario.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Lake Ontario by way of Wood Creek, the Oneida and the Oswego: about 85 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic. One that lands on the northeast side reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 290 river miles.
Lake on the way: Oneida Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Delta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Delta has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Trenton Falls, 16 miles east, 210 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
