The Putnam 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 1886. Next is 70° in 2002.
Putnam’s center stands about 360 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 950 ft, a difference of 860 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Black Mountain, about 2,640 ft, 12 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potsdam Sandstone, from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 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 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, phyllite, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Paragneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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.
A raindrop that lands in Putnam reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu: about 190 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 Putnam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Putnam 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 Putnam 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, 17 miles north-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
