The Lake Erie Beach 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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18° on Nov. 11, 2017, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 19° in 2019.
Lake Erie Beach’s center stands about 650 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Angola and Rhinestreet Shales, from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 22×. 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 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.7 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 Lake Erie Beach reaches Lake Erie by way of Muddy Creek: about 1 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lake Erie Beach; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lake Erie Beach has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Lake Erie Beach normally reaches 50° and falls to 35°. The record high is 65°, in 2011; the record low 20°, in 2004. The most rain on this date, 1.11 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 at Dunkirk Chautauqua County Airport, 14 miles southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
