The Schenectady 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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Partly cloudy; warmer
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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.
Schenectady’s center stands about 250 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 210 ft to 470 ft, a difference of 260 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shellstone Hill, about 1,210 ft, 15 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Schenectady Formation (graywacke, sandstone, siltstone), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Graywacke, sandstone, siltstone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale. 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.
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 Schenectady reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Mohawk and the Hudson: about 180 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Schenectady; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Schenectady 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 Schenectady 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, 9 miles east-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
