The 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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83° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1912. Next is 79° in 2005.
Salem’s center stands about 1,060 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 900 ft to 1,090 ft, a difference of 190 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Albany Hill, about 1,280 ft, 10 miles south-southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Council Grove Group (shale, limestone), from the Permian, 252 to 299 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 45×. 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, sandstone, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Silt. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, limestone. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Limestone, shale. Age: Permian, 252 to 299 million years old. About 1 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 Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of the North Fork Big Nemaha, the Big Nemaha, the Missouri and the Mississippi: about 1,680 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 Salem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salem has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 88° in July; winter nights fall to about 17° in January. About 35 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 53° and falls to 31°. The record high is 75°, in 1990; the record low 1°, in 1940. The most rain on this date, 0.65 in, fell in 1931.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1912 at Falls City Brenner Field, 7 miles east. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
