The Penfield 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
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Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
8° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 10° in 1905.
Penfield’s center stands about 430 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 270 ft to 550 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Hopper Hills, about 1,160 ft, 13 miles south.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lockport Group (dolostone), from the Silurian, 425 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 28×. 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 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: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 428 to 434 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Penfield reaches Lake Ontario by way of Fourmile Creek: about 12 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 Penfield; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Penfield has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 102 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 35 inches of water.
On November 14 Penfield normally reaches 50° and falls to 34°. The record high is 72°, in 1994; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.13 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Rochester Area threaded record (Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport, 10 miles west, 110 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
