The Smolan 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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Showers likely
69° on Nov. 15, 2021, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1905. Next is 68° in 1953.
Smolan’s center stands about 1,290 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,260 ft to 1,390 ft, a difference of 130 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Soldier Cap Mound, about 1,540 ft, 6 miles west-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Alluvium (sand, silt, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 20 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, mudstone, shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 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 Smolan reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,810 river miles.
1,170 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Smolan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Smolan has a cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 86° in July; winter nights fall to about 11° in January. A normal year brings about 22 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 10 inches of water.
On November 14 Smolan normally reaches 42° and falls to 22°. The record high is 63°, in 2025; the record low −1°, in 1916. The most rain on this date, 0.31 in, fell in 1906.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1905 from the Salmon Area threaded record (Salina Municipal Airport, 4 miles northeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
