The Moriah 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1886. Next is 70° in 2002.
Moriah’s center stands about 850 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 1,500 ft, a difference of 1,410 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Beck-horn, about 4,820 ft, 14 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial and Alluvial Deposits (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 7×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, metaanorthosite. 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 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 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. 6 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.
Moriah straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the northwest side runs to New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean; most of the rest goes to the St. Lawrence River.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Mill Brook and the Richelieu: about 160 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic. One that lands on the northwest side reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Newport Brook, the Schroon and the Hudson: about 310 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
80 miles of the trip are on the Richelieu.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Moriah; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Moriah has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 39 inches of water.
On November 14 Moriah normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 67°, in 1959; the record low 0°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.93 in, fell in 2021.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1886 at Cornwall, 16 miles east-southeast, 500 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
