The Middlesex 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
79° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1942. Next is 73° in 1956.
Middlesex’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 710 ft to 1,840 ft, a difference of 1,130 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Gannett Hill, about 2,320 ft, 7 miles west.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 0.8 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 Middlesex reaches Lake Ontario by way of Canandaigua Lake, the Canandaigua Outlet, the Erie Canal, the Clyde, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 140 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Canandaigua Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Middlesex; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Middlesex has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Middlesex normally reaches 49° and falls to 34°. The record high is 69°, in 1961; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.59 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1942 at Canandaigua 3 S, 10 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
