The Sparta 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.
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
76° on Nov. 16, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 74° in 1927.
Sparta’s center stands about 740 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 1,330 ft, a difference of 750 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Sunrise Mountain, about 1,630 ft, 13 miles north-northwest.
The section below crosses 17 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 21×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1.1 to 1.1 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Granite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, siltstone. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Conglomerate. Age: Silurian, 428 to 445 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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. 11 smaller units along the line are not listed.
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 Sparta reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hudson: about 190 river miles.
90 miles of the trip are on the Hudson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sparta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sparta has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. About 52 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Sparta normally reaches 52° and falls to 32°. The record high is 71°, in 1902; the record low 10°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.37 in, fell in 1935.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Charlotteburg Reservoir, 11 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
