The North Elba 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. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1897. Next is 68° in 1931.
North Elba’s center stands about 1,990 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,660 ft to 2,740 ft, a difference of 1,080 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Marcy, about 5,290 ft, 9 miles south.
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 6 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.
Gneiss, metaanorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Anorthosite, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.6 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 North Elba reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Chubb, the West Branch Ausable, the Ausable and the Richelieu: about 170 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
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 North Elba; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
North Elba has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 74° in July; winter nights fall to about 7° in January. A normal year brings about 104 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 North Elba normally reaches 40° and falls to 26°. The record high is 64°, in 1989; the record low −5°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.31 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1897 at Lake Placid 2 S, 4 miles north-northwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
