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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
70° on Nov. 12, 2022, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 69° in 2020.
New Salem’s center stands about 1,070 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 520 ft to 1,280 ft, a difference of 760 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Grace, about 1,640 ft, 13 miles north.
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 16×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Late Ordovician, 449 to 453 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss, quartzite, schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, amphibolite. Age: Late Ordovician to Silurian, 440 to 454 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 New Salem reaches Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the East Branch Swift, the Swift, the Chicopee and the Connecticut: about 120 river miles.
80 miles of the trip are on the Connecticut.
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 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 14° in January. About 42 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 New Salem normally reaches 50° and falls to 30°. The record high is 62°, in 2011; the record low 12°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Orange Municipal Airport, 5 miles north-northeast, 530 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
