The Tonawanda 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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78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1982. Next is 72° in 2012.
Tonawanda’s center stands about 580 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 630 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is West Hill, about 760 ft, 14 miles east-southeast.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 47×. 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 14 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 0.8 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 Tonawanda reaches Lake Ontario by way of Ellicott Creek and the Niagara: about 25 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 Tonawanda; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tonawanda has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. A normal year brings about 80 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Tonawanda normally reaches 50° and falls to 31°. The record high is 68°, in 1994; the record low 14°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1982 at North Tonawanda, 3 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
