The Isle La Motte 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; warmer
Mostly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
1° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1945. Next is 10° in 1986.
Isle La Motte’s center stands about 190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 90 ft to 220 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Bellevue Hill, about 1,300 ft, 15 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cumberland Head Formation (limestone, shale), from the Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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 34×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Dolostone, limestone. Age: Early Ordovician, 471 to 487 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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. 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 Isle La Motte reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Lake Champlain and the Richelieu: about 110 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 Isle La Motte; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Isle La Motte has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Isle La Motte normally reaches 46° and falls to 29°. The record high is 64°, in 1959; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.88 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1945 from the Plattsburgh Area threaded record (Plattsburgh International Airport, 18 miles south-southwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
