The Rensselaer Falls 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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68° on Nov. 11, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1934. Next is 65° in 2011.
Rensselaer Falls’s center stands about 320 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 290 ft to 400 ft, a difference of 110 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Kimball Hill, about 1,010 ft, 13 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Potsdam Sandstone, from the Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old.
The section below crosses 8 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 39×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 542 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Marble. 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 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 2 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 Rensselaer Falls reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Oswegatchie and the Saint Lawrence: about 70 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Saint Lawrence.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Rensselaer Falls; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Rensselaer Falls has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1934 at Colton 2 N, 18 miles east, 260 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
