The Watkins Glen 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.
Showers likely
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
14° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1938. Next is 14° in 2019.
Watkins Glen’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 440 ft to 1,430 ft, a difference of 990 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Connecticut Hill, about 2,140 ft, 10 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Genesee Group (shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 12×. 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 Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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.
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 Watkins Glen reaches Lake Ontario by way of Seneca Lake, the Seneca and the Oswego: about 120 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watkins Glen; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watkins Glen has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 32 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Watkins Glen normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 69°, in 1945; the record low 17°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 0.40 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1938 at Elmira Corning Regional Airport, 16 miles south, 480 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
