The Rensselaer 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
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Sunny
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Mostly sunny
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3.35 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1902. The next wettest, 2.86 inches, fell in 1985.
Rensselaer’s center stands about 710 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 620 ft to 760 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Kinderhookian Series (limestone, siltstone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
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 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Limestone, siltstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, sandstone. Age: Early Devonian to Late Devonian, 359 to 422 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 Rensselaer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Big Creek, the Salt River and the Mississippi: about 1,300 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rensselaer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rensselaer has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. About 41 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Rensselaer normally reaches 52° and falls to 34°. The record high is 80°, in 1999; the record low 6°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1913.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1902 at Hannibal Water Works, 10 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
