The Salem 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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5.82 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1907. The next wettest, 5.63 inches, fell in 2011.
Salem’s center stands about 500 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 360 ft to 570 ft, a difference of 210 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Shinall Mountain, about 1,080 ft, 12 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Womble Shale (Middle Ordovician) (black-shale), from the Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 37×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Sand, fine-detrital. Age: Early Eocene, 48 to 56 million years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Chert, shale. Age: Middle Ordovician to Late Ordovician, 445 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
Novaculite. Age: Late Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 384 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Clay, marl. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 0.3 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 Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hurricane Creek, the Saline, the Ouachita, the Black River, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 590 river miles.
190 miles of the trip are on the Ouachita.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salem has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 93° in July; winter nights fall to about 30° in January. About 53 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 64° and falls to 41°. The record high is 80°, in 1964; the record low 14°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 1.90 in, fell in 1959.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1907 at Benton, 5 miles south-southwest, 150 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
