The Volney 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.
13° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 17° in 1997.
Volney’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 530 ft, a difference of 170 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated Medina Group and Queenston Formation (shale), from the Late Ordovician to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. 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 to Silurian, 434 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 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 Volney reaches Lake Ontario by way of Bell Creek, the Oneida and the Oswego: about 40 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 Volney; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Volney has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Fulton Oswego County Airport, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.