Aurora
Aurora Geography & Climate
Geography
Aurora sits on the glaciated plateau of north-east Ohio, at around 350 metres, in Portage County.
Wet ground
The land here is nearly flat glacial till with poor drainage, which produced an unusual concentration of wetlands — bogs, fens, marshes and beaver meadows — in what would otherwise be ordinary farmland. Several are protected, and they are the reason the area supports plant and bird communities more typical of further north. The kettle holes and the poorly drained flats were left by the retreating ice sheet about 14,000 years ago.
Tinker’s Creek
The town’s watercourse rises near here and flows west to join the Cuyahoga in the national park, making it the largest tributary of that river. Its upper reaches through Aurora are slow and swampy; downstream it cuts a gorge.
The portage
The county takes its name from the carrying place between the Cuyahoga and the Tuscarawas, which is also why Akron is where it is. Aurora sits on the watershed country above both.
Woodland
Beech, maple, oak and hemlock, with substantial second-growth forest on land that was cleared for dairying and then allowed to return.
Bogs and fens
The distinction matters locally. A bog is fed only by rainfall, acidic and low in nutrients, supporting sphagnum, cranberry and sometimes carnivorous plants; a fen is fed by groundwater moving through limestone or till, and is alkaline and far richer in species. Portage County has both within a few kilometres, which is why its preserves carry plants otherwise found hundreds of kilometres north.
Position
Roughly equidistant from Cleveland and Akron, which is what turned it into a commuter town.
Climate Patterns
Aurora has the continental climate of north-east Ohio, with more snow than the state average because of where it sits.
Summer
June to August is warm and humid, with highs of 26 to 28°C and nights around 15°C. The elevation and the tree cover keep it a degree or two cooler than the Ohio lowlands, and thunderstorms are frequent in the afternoons.
Winter
December to March is cold, with highs near freezing and lows around minus 7°C. Snowfall is substantial — well over a metre in an average year — because the town lies within the reach of lake-effect bands coming off Lake Erie. Cold air crossing the open water picks up moisture and drops it as it rises onto this plateau, and individual events can be heavy and very local.
Cloud
This is among the cloudiest parts of the United States between November and February, with very few clear days in midwinter.
Spring and autumn
Autumn is the best season: dry, clear and warm into late October, with strong colour in the beech-maple woods. Spring is late and wet, and the wetlands are at their fullest.
The snow belt edge
Aurora sits near the western margin of the primary snow belt, which means it gets substantially more snow than Columbus or Cincinnati and substantially less than the ridge around Chardon a short distance north-east. A single storm can leave very different totals across the township, and local forecasts are worth reading closely in winter.
Rainfall
Around 1,000 millimetres a year excluding snow, spread through the months.