The Marathon 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
Sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 67° in 2012.
Marathon’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,540 ft, a difference of 540 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Virgil Mountain, about 2,130 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Genesee Group (shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 18×. 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, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 1 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 Marathon reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Merrill Creek, the Otselic, the Tioughnioga, the Chenango and the Susquehanna: about 370 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
290 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Marathon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Marathon has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Freeville 1 NE, 16 miles west-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
