The Cleveland 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. 12, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1871. Next is 73° in 1915.
Cleveland’s center stands about 660 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 560 ft to 700 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Orange Hill, about 1,240 ft, 14 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Ohio Shale (shale, black-shale), from the Devonian, 359 to 422 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 27×. 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, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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.
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 Cleveland reaches Lake Erie by way of the Cuyahoga: about 5 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cleveland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cleveland has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Cleveland normally reaches 52° and falls to 37°. The record high is 72°, in 1994; the record low 13°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.07 in, fell in 2011.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1871 from the Cleveland Area threaded record (Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, 10 miles southwest, 120 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.