The Skaneateles 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
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Mostly sunny; warmer
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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 72° in 1902.
Skaneateles’s center stands about 890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 780 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 310 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ripley Hill, about 2,020 ft, 14 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Skaneateles Formation (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 16×. 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 Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. 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 Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 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 Skaneateles reaches Lake Ontario by way of Skaneateles Creek, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 65 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 Skaneateles; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Skaneateles has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 15° in January. A normal year brings about 109 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Skaneateles normally reaches 48° and falls to 32°. The record high is 72°, in 1902; the record low 8°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.50 in, fell in 1901.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Auburn, 6 miles west, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
