The Rochester 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
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
72° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 70° in 1909.
Rochester’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 850 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Slide Mountain, about 4,180 ft, 14 miles north-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated Lower Hamilton Group (sandstone, shale), from the Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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 6×. 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: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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. 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 Rochester reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Mill Brook, Rondout Creek and the Hudson: about 120 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rochester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rochester 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 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Rochester normally reaches 49° and falls to 35°. The record high is 67°, in 1909; the record low 12°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.95 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 at Mohonk Lake, 7 miles east-southeast, 600 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
