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.
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84° on Nov. 16, 2016, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 80° in 2005.
New Salem’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,190 ft to 1,370 ft, a difference of 180 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Chase Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 57×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 19 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 0.8 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 0.7 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 Cedar Creek, Timber Creek, the Walnut, the Arkansas and the Mississippi: about 1,290 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Murray Lake and Ozark Lake.
600 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
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 humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 92° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 New Salem normally reaches 59° and falls to 36°. The record high is 76°, in 2020; the record low 16°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.49 in, fell in 2022.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Winfield Strother Field Airport, 13 miles southwest, 110 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
