The Waterville 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.
74° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1907. Next is 69° in 1999.
Waterville’s center stands about 1,210 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 740 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Noahs Rump, about 2,010 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Onondaga Limestone, from the Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 394 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 388 to 394 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Early Devonian to Middle Devonian, 388 to 410 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Middle Devonian, 384 to 388 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 428 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Waterville reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Big Creek, Oriskany Creek, the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 300 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 Waterville; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Waterville has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 12° in January. A normal year brings about 77 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 Waterville normally reaches 47° and falls to 29°. The record high is 65°, in 2010; the record low 7°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1916.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Sherburne, 19 miles south-southwest, 120 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.