The Sand Lake 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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74° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1874. Next is 73° in 1928.
Sand Lake’s center stands about 840 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 580 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 1,030 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Berlin Mountain, about 2,790 ft, 14 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Nassau Formation (shale), from the Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 10 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.
Shale. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Graywacke. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite, schist. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Melange. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 4 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 Sand Lake reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of Wynants Kill and the Hudson: about 170 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Sand Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Sand Lake 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 Sand Lake 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, 15 miles west-northwest, 560 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
