The Cortland 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.
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73° on Nov. 12, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 72° in 1931.
Cortland’s center stands about 1,050 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 890 ft to 1,220 ft, a difference of 330 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Trautman Hill, about 1,310 ft, 11 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maxville Limestone; Rushville, Logan, and Cuyhoga Formations, Undivided (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, black-shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.8 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 Cortland reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mosquito Creek Lake, Mosquito Creek, the Mahoning, the Beaver, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,990 river miles.
Lake on the way: Mosquito Creek Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Cortland; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Cortland has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 68 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Cortland normally reaches 50° and falls to 34°. The record high is 69°, in 1994; the record low 12°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.05 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1896 from the Youngstown Area threaded record (Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, 6 miles south-southeast, 120 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
