The Saratoga 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.
9.12 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1899. The next wettest, 3.53 inches, fell in 1957.
Saratoga’s center stands about 450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 250 ft to 450 ft, a difference of 200 ft: gently rolling country.
The section below crosses 4 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.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marlstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 1 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 Saratoga reaches the Gulf of America by way of Yellow Creek, the Little River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 550 river miles.
390 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Saratoga; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saratoga has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in August; winter nights fall to about 32° in January. About 55 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 3 inches of snow.
On November 14 Saratoga normally reaches 66° and falls to 41°. The record high is 85°, in 1955; the record low 18°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.62 in, fell in 1947.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Nashville, 13 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.