The Wirt 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 1956. Next is 69° in 2012.
Wirt’s center stands about 1,890 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,640 ft to 2,350 ft, a difference of 710 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Alma Hill, about 2,570 ft, 9 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Conneaut Group, undivided (shale, sandstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 19×. 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 12 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. 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.
Wirt straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the north side runs to Lake Ontario; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of Little Genesee Creek, Oswayo Creek, the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,230 river miles. One that lands on the north side reaches Lake Ontario by way of South Branch Van Campen Creek, Van Campen Creek and the Genesee: about 140 river miles. From the lake it goes down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Allegheny Reservoir.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wirt; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wirt has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. A normal year brings about 54 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Wellsville, 11 miles east, 380 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.