The Niagara Falls 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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11° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1951. Next is 14° in 1959.
Niagara Falls’s center stands about 620 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 310 ft to 670 ft, a difference of 360 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lockport Group (dolostone), from the Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 4 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 Niagara Falls reaches Lake Ontario by way of Gill Creek and the Niagara: about 17 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 Niagara Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Niagara Falls has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 33 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Niagara Falls normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 65°, in 2009; the record low 23°, in 2004. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1961.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1951 at Niagara Falls International Airport, 6 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
