The Orwell 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3.43 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1948. The next wettest, 1.67 inches, fell in 1965.
Orwell’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 540 ft to 1,170 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Castor Hill, about 1,500 ft, 9 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Oswego Sandstone, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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 14×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 18 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million 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.
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 Orwell reaches Lake Ontario by way of Pekin Brook, Orwell Creek and the Salmon: about 20 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 Orwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orwell has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. About 48 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orwell normally reaches 46° and falls to 30°. The record high is 65°, in 1959; the record low 20°, in 2023. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1985.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1948 at Pulaski, 6 miles west, 410 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
