The Rochester 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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78° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1894. Next is 76° in 1909.
Rochester’s center stands about 940 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 870 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sprotts Hill, about 1,170 ft, 15 miles south.
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 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. 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 16 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 9 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 Rochester reaches Lake Erie by way of the West Branch Black and the Black River: about 60 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 Rochester; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rochester has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 33 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
On November 14 Rochester normally reaches 50° and falls to 34°. The record high is 76°, in 1909; the record low 10°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.35 in, fell in 1955.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1894 at Norwalk Wwtp, 19 miles west-northwest, 270 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
