The Salisbury 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.
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy; warmer
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Mostly sunny
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75° on Nov. 11, 2020, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1996. Next is 70° in 2022.
Salisbury’s center stands about 810 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 470 ft to 1,030 ft, a difference of 560 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Kearsarge, about 2,910 ft, 7 miles west.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Smalls Falls Formation, undivided (schist, granofels), from the Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old.
The section below crosses 9 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Pelitic-schist, metasandstone. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartz-diorite, tonalite, granodiorite. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Schist, granofels. Age: Silurian, 425 to 434 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Early Devonian, 394 to 422 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Metaclastic. Age: Silurian, 434 to 445 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. 3 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 Salisbury reaches the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Blackwater, the Contoocook and the Merrimack: about 120 river miles.
100 miles of the trip are on the Merrimack.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Salisbury; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salisbury has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 13° in January. About 49 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1996 at Salisbury, 2 miles south-southwest, 260 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
