The Somerset 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
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
3° on Nov. 16, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 11° in 2019.
Somerset’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 240 ft to 390 ft, a difference of 150 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queenston Shale, from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. 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: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
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 Somerset reaches Lake Ontario by way of Golden Hill Creek: about 8 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 Somerset; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Somerset has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Somerset normally reaches 49° and falls to 34°. The record high is 70°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.50 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Lockport 2 SE, 14 miles south-southwest, 320 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
