The Palmyra 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
83° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 78° in 2022.
Palmyra’s center stands about 480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 650 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hopper Hills, about 1,160 ft, 15 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Camillus and Syracuse Formations (shale), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. 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. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 428 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Palmyra reaches Lake Ontario by way of Ganargua Creek, the Erie Canal, the Clyde, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 110 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 Palmyra; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Palmyra has a cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Victor 2 NW, 12 miles west-southwest, 170 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
