The Lewis 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
70° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1949. Next is 66° in 1956.
Lewis’s center stands about 1,590 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,650 ft, a difference of 370 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gomer Hill, about 2,140 ft, 13 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oswego Sandstone, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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 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.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 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.
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 Lewis reaches Lake Ontario by way of East Branch Fish Creek, Fish Creek, the Oneida and the Oswego: about 100 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Oneida Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lewis; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lewis has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 164 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 58 inches of water.
On November 14 Lewis normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 61°, in 2010; the record low −1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Boonville 4 SSW, 10 miles east-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
