The Saranac 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
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Partly cloudy
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70° on Nov. 11, 2002, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1906. Next is 70° in 2012.
Saranac’s center stands about 800 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 730 ft to 1,830 ft, a difference of 1,100 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Lyon Mountain, about 3,840 ft, 7 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Glacial and Alluvial Deposits (unconsolidated), from the Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 497 million years old. About 11 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million 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.
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 Saranac reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of True Brook, the Saranac and the Richelieu: about 140 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 Saranac; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saranac has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 79° in July; winter nights fall to about 9° in January. About 43 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Saranac normally reaches 45° and falls to 28°. The record high is 64°, in 2011; the record low 3°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 1937.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1906 at Dannemora, 5 miles north-northeast, 540 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
