The Lancaster 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
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
8° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 9° in 1967.
Lancaster’s center stands about 680 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 640 ft to 750 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marcellus Formation (black-shale), from the Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 29×. 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 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Lancaster reaches Lake Erie by way of Plum Bottom Creek, Cayuga Creek and the Buffalo: about 18 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 Lancaster; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lancaster 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 95 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Lancaster normally reaches 48° and falls to 35°. The record high is 69°, in 1994; the record low 15°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.93 in, fell in 1871.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Buffalo Area threaded record (Buffalo Niagara International Airpor, 4 miles northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
