The Seward 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.
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74° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 73° in 1956.
Seward’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,130 ft to 1,800 ft, a difference of 670 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pine Mountain, about 2,370 ft, 5 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Marcellus Formation (black-shale), from the Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 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. 3 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 Seward reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Cobleskill Creek, Schoharie Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 250 river miles.
160 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Seward; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Seward has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 73° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 86 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 48 inches of water.
On November 14 Seward normally reaches 40° and falls to 30°. The record high is 70°, in 1989; the record low 9°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.95 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Cooperstown, 16 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
