The McGraw 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.
73° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1948. Next is 67° in 2012.
McGraw’s center stands about 1,160 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,080 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Virgil Mountain, about 2,130 ft, 7 miles south-southwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 McGraw reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Trout Brook, the Tioughnioga, the Chenango and the Susquehanna: about 380 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 McGraw; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
McGraw 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, 13 miles west-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.