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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86° on Nov. 14, 2017, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1936. Next is 84° in 1973.
Salem’s center stands about 4,090 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 4,060 ft to 4,470 ft, a difference of 410 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mesa Azur, about 6,570 ft, 15 miles south.
The section below crosses 10 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Miocene to Pleistocene, 0.1 to 7.2 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Clastic, unconsolidated. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Felsic-volcanic, clastic, andesite. Age: Late Eocene to Early Oligocene, 28 to 38 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Conglomerate-sandstone, coarse-detrital, fine-detrital. Age: Late Oligocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 28 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Unconsolidated. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 0.1 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. 4 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 Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Rio Grande: about 1,340 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Paz Ramirez Lake and Amistad Reservoir.
740 miles of the trip are on the Rio Grande.
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 cold semi-arid climate. Summer afternoons average 97° in June; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 11 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 69° and falls to 37°. The record high is 86°, in 2017; the record low 22°, in 2018. The most rain on this date, 0.61 in, fell in 2003.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1936 at Caballo Dam, 14 miles north-northwest, 150 ft higher. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
