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.
Partly cloudy
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12° on Nov. 16, 1996, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1956. Next is 14° in 1956.
Salem’s center stands about 370 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 220 ft to 610 ft, a difference of 390 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Clark Hill, about 890 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
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 30×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Schist, gneiss. Age: Cambrian to Ordovician, 445 to 542 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 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 Salem reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the East Branch Eightmile, the Eightmile and the Connecticut: about 25 river miles.
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 hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 28 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 52 inches of water.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 72°, in 1993; the record low 17°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 2.25 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1956 at Norwich Public Utility Plant, 11 miles east-northeast, 350 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
