The Watertown 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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74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 71° in 2012.
Watertown’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 370 ft to 770 ft, a difference of 400 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Underwood Hill, about 1,160 ft, 6 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Trenton Group (limestone), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 15×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 Watertown reaches Lake Ontario by way of the Black River: about 9 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 Watertown; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watertown has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 116 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Watertown normally reaches 47° and falls to 31°. The record high is 66°, in 2009; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.76 in, fell in 1936.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Watertown, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
