The Lorraine 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2012.
Lorraine’s center stands about 1,000 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 680 ft to 1,250 ft, a difference of 570 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Castor Hill, about 1,500 ft, 10 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pulaski and Whetstone Gulf Formations (siltstone, shale), 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 13×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 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 Lorraine reaches Lake Ontario by way of Raystone Creek, South Sandy Creek and Sandy Creek: about 20 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Lorraine; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Lorraine has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 116 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Lorraine normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 2009; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1936.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Watertown, 15 miles north-northeast, 500 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
