The Malta 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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73° on Nov. 14, 1989, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1955. Next is 72° in 2020.
Malta’s center stands about 340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 150 ft to 390 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Willard Mountain, about 1,400 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Canajoharie Shale (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 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 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.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Graywacke, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Slate, shale. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 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 Malta reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Saratoga Lake, Fish Creek and the Hudson: about 200 river miles.
Lake on the way: Saratoga Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Malta; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Malta has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 64 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 46 inches of water.
On November 14 Malta normally reaches 49° and falls to 31°. The record high is 73°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.04 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1955 at Saratoga Springs 4 SW, 5 miles north-northwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
