The Natural Bridge 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 1891. Next is 69° in 1964.
Natural Bridge’s center stands about 820 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 700 ft to 960 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Big Hill, about 1,290 ft, 12 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial and Alluvial Deposits (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 25×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Hornblende-gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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. 3 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Natural Bridge reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Indian, the Oswegatchie and the Saint Lawrence: about 150 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake Saint Lawrence and Black Lake.
75 miles of the trip are on the Indian.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Natural Bridge; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Natural Bridge has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 8° in January. A normal year brings about 127 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Natural Bridge normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 65°, in 1930; the record low 1°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1891 at Lowville, 19 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
