The Saranac 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.
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
−12° on Nov. 15, 1933, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1903. Next is −9° in 2019.
Saranac Lake’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,520 ft to 2,180 ft, a difference of 660 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is MacIntyre Mountains, about 5,080 ft, 14 miles south-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Mangerite, pyroxene-(hornblende) syenite gneiss (gneiss, monzonite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, metaanorthosite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Gneiss, monzonite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion 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.
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 Lake reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Saranac and the Richelieu: about 170 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 Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Saranac Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 37 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Saranac Lake normally reaches 42° and falls to 23°. The record high is 66°, in 1909; the record low −4°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.71 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1903 from the Saranac Lake Area threaded record (Saranac Lake Adirondack Regional Airport, 6 miles northwest, 110 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
