The Van Buren 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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6° on Nov. 17, 1959, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 6° in 2019.
Van Buren’s center stands about 770 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 840 ft, a difference of 120 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 64×. 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 13 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Silurian, 422 to 445 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 Van Buren reaches Lake Erie by way of the Middle Branch Portage and the Portage: 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 Van Buren; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Van Buren has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 24 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 38 inches of water.
On November 14 Van Buren normally reaches 50° and falls to 34°. The record high is 73°, in 1909; the record low 11°, in 1911. The most rain on this date, 1.54 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Findlay Wpcc, 6 miles south. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
