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.
Cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
76° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1902.
Orwell’s center stands about 1,480 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,670 ft, a difference of 770 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Cork Hill, about 1,940 ft, 13 miles northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lock Haven Formation (sandstone, siltstone, mudstone), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 17×. 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, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 22 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 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 Orwell reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Jerome Creek, Johnson Creek, Wysox Creek and the Susquehanna: about 280 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
230 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
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 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Orwell normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 74°, in 1902; the record low 7°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 0.94 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Waverly, 15 miles west-northwest, 680 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
