The Watson 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.
Chance of showers
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69° on Nov. 12, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 65° in 1931.
Watson’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,250 ft to 1,640 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Stillwater Mountain, about 2,270 ft, 10 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Charnockite, granitic and quartz syenite gneiss (charnockite, gneiss), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 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.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss, monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Amphibolite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.4 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 Watson reaches Lake Ontario by way of Burnt Creek, the Independence and the Black River: about 80 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
60 miles of the trip are on the Black River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Watson; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Watson has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Watson normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 60°, in 2005; the record low −2°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Stillwater Reservoir, 11 miles east-northeast, 310 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
