The Dresden 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.
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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1909.
Dresden’s center stands about 1,140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 1,920 ft, a difference of 1,830 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 2,640 ft, 3 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hybrid rock: mangeritic to charnockitic gneiss (gneiss, anorthosite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 14 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 9×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, anorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, siltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 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. 8 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 Dresden reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Pike Brook and the Richelieu: about 210 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
90 miles of the trip are on Pike Brook.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Dresden; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Dresden has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Dresden normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 67°, in 1973; the record low 5°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Glens Falls Area threaded record (Glens Falls/Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport, 19 miles south-southwest, 820 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
