The Buffalo 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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85° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1878. Next is 78° in 1958.
Buffalo’s center stands about 1,150 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mosier Hill, about 1,510 ft, 4 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Washington Formation (sandstone, shale), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 35×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 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 Buffalo reaches the Gulf of America by way of Buffalo Creek, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,910 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 Buffalo; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Buffalo has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Buffalo normally reaches 52° and falls to 36°. The record high is 74°, in 1989; the record low 10°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.10 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1878 from the Wheeling Area threaded record (Wheeling Ohio County Airport, 16 miles west). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
