The Solomon 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.
84° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 83° in 2016.
Solomon’s center stands about 1,190 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,150 ft to 1,290 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Iron Mound, about 1,480 ft, 11 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dune Sand, from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 61×. 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. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Sand, silt, clay. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Early Cretaceous, 100 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 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 Solomon reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Solomon, the Smoky Hill, the Kansas, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,760 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 Solomon; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Solomon has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 94° in July; winter nights fall to about 22° in January. A normal year brings about 12 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 34 inches of water.
On November 14 Solomon normally reaches 58° and falls to 35°. The record high is 77°, in 2025; the record low 6°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 1.06 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 at Abilene, 8 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.