The Rensselaer 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 73° in 1928.
Rensselaer’s center stands about 20 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 430 ft, a difference of 430 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Perigo Hill, about 1,890 ft, 14 miles east.
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 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 13×. 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. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Graywacke, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Ordovician, 445 to 487 million 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. 1 smaller unit 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 Rensselaer reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Hudson: about 150 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rensselaer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rensselaer has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 16° in January. A normal year brings about 59 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 41 inches of water.
On November 14 Rensselaer normally reaches 50° and falls to 32°. The record high is 70°, in 1973; the record low 12°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.79 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1874 from the Albany Area threaded record (Albany International Airport, 8 miles north-northwest, 260 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
