The Ithaca 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.
Sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Chance of showers
72° on Nov. 11, 1964, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1944. Next is 70° in 1971.
Ithaca’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 720 ft to 1,120 ft, a difference of 400 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Spring Hill, about 1,220 ft, 11 miles northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 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 33×. 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. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 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 Ithaca reaches the Gulf of America by way of Willow Creek, the Pine River, the Wisconsin and the Mississippi: about 1,680 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Ithaca; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Ithaca has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 34 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Ithaca normally reaches 46° and falls to 28°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 2.01 in, fell in 1956.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1944 at Lone Rock Tri County Airport, 10 miles south-southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
