The New 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.
Sunny
Partly cloudy; warmer
Sunny
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
6° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1991. Next is 15° in 2005.
New Salem’s center stands about 780 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 670 ft to 860 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Carbondale Formation (shale, sandstone, coal), from the Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 44×. 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: Early Mississippian to Middle Mississippian, 331 to 359 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone, coal. Age: Middle Pennsylvanian to Late Pennsylvanian, 304 to 315 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 72 to 84 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Early Pennsylvanian to Middle Pennsylvanian, 307 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Early Mississippian, 347 to 359 million years old. About 0.4 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 New Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of Bay Creek, the The Sny and the Mississippi: about 1,290 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of New Salem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
New Salem has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 18° in January. A normal year brings about 16 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 40 inches of water.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1991 at Pittsfield No 2, 7 miles south-southeast, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
