The Utica 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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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1909. Next is 69° in 1948.
Utica’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 400 ft to 1,060 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Tassel Hill, about 1,960 ft, 12 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Utica Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 13×. 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 Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Limestone, dolostone. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 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 Utica reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 260 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 Utica; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Utica has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 51 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1909 at Trenton Falls, 13 miles north-northeast, 300 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
