The Orwell 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.
73° on Nov. 12, 1949, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1896. Next is 72° in 1931.
Orwell’s center stands about 900 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 800 ft to 1,000 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Ballards Hill, about 1,340 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
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 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 36×. 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 11 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 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.
A raindrop that lands in Orwell reaches Lake Erie by way of the Grand River: about 65 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 Orwell; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Orwell 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 Orwell 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, 22 miles south-southeast, 270 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.