The Albany 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.
67° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 64° in 2009.
Albany’s center stands about 1,630 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,140 ft to 2,090 ft, a difference of 950 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bartlett Mountain, about 2,410 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Catskill Formation (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 12×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 12 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, mudstone. Age: Late Devonian, 359 to 384 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.6 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Albany reaches Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean by way of South Branch Towanda Creek, Towanda Creek and the Susquehanna: about 290 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Aldred.
230 miles of the trip are on the Susquehanna.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Albany; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Albany has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. A normal year brings about 70 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 53 inches of water.
On November 14 Albany normally reaches 45° and falls to 29°. The record high is 58°, in 2010; the record low 12°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.57 in, fell in 1997.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Laporte, 13 miles south-southwest, 340 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.