The Riga 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.
Riga’s center stands about 640 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 550 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Burleigh Hill, about 1,120 ft, 15 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Camillus, Syracuse, and Vernon Formations (shale), from the Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 30×. 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 8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 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. 5 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 Riga reaches Lake Ontario by way of Black Creek and the Genesee: about 30 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 Riga; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Riga 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 Riga 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, 11 miles east-northeast, 100 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
