The Oswegatchie 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.
75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 72° in 2012.
Oswegatchie’s center stands about 300 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 410 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Huckleberry Mountain, about 540 ft, 11 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Beekmantown Group (in part) (dolostone, limestone), from the Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 5 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.
Marble. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 2 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 Oswegatchie reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Oswegatchie and the Saint Lawrence: about 55 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Saint Lawrence.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Oswegatchie; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Oswegatchie has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 5° in January. A normal year brings about 92 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Oswegatchie normally reaches 46° and falls to 27°. The record high is 66°, in 1989; the record low −4°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.70 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Gouverneur 3 NW, 19 miles south, 120 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.