The Wells 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
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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1909.
Wells’s center stands about 510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 410 ft to 1,820 ft, a difference of 1,410 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dorset Mountain, about 3,780 ft, 12 miles southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Bull Formation - Mettawee slate facies (phyllite), from the Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Graywacke, siltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Graywacke, slate. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, phyllite, limestone. Age: Late Ordovician, 445 to 459 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. 7 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 Wells reaches the St. Lawrence River by way of Mill Brook, the Mettawee and the Richelieu: about 230 river miles. The St. Lawrence carries it on to the Atlantic.
Lake on the way: Lake Champlain.
110 miles of the trip are on the Mettawee.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Wells; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Wells has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Wells normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 67°, in 1973; the record low 5°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Glens Falls Area threaded record (Glens Falls/Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport, 21 miles west-southwest, 190 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
