The Star 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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69° on Nov. 12, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1925. Next is 65° in 1931.
Star Lake’s center stands about 1,490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,240 ft to 1,860 ft, a difference of 620 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bear Mountain, about 2,530 ft, 15 miles east.
The section below crosses 11 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 14×. 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. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 11 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 2 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Marble. 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. 5 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 Star Lake reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of the Twin Lake Stream, the Little River, the Oswegatchie and the Saint Lawrence: about 150 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Saint Lawrence.
95 miles of the trip are on the Oswegatchie.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Star Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Star Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 4° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Star Lake normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 60°, in 2005; the record low −2°, in 1939. The most rain on this date, 0.90 in, fell in 1925.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1925 at Stillwater Reservoir, 19 miles south, 200 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
