The Paul Smiths 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
−12° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is −9° in 2019.
Paul Smiths’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,620 ft to 2,110 ft, a difference of 490 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Moose Mountain, about 3,860 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Metanorthosite and anorthositic gneiss (gneiss, metaanorthosite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 16×. 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 15 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 2 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Gneiss, monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.5 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 Paul Smiths reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Saint Regis and the Saint Lawrence: about 85 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Paul Smiths; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Paul Smiths has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Paul Smiths normally reaches 42° and falls to 23°. The record high is 66°, in 1909; the record low −4°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 from the Saranac Lake Area threaded record (Saranac Lake Adirondack Regional Airport, 4 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
