The Ithaca 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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0° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 5° in 1959.
Ithaca’s center stands about 1,030 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,100 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lockport Dolomite (dolostone), from the Silurian, 425 to 445 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 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 425 to 445 million years old. About 16 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone, shale. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, dolostone, limestone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million years old. About 3 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 Ithaca reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Millers Fork, Twin Creek, the Great Miami, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,560 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ithaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ithaca has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ithaca normally reaches 52° and falls to 33°. The record high is 74°, in 1909; the record low 7°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.45 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Greenville Water Plant, 13 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
