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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70° on Nov. 15, 1956, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 69° in 1909.
Salem’s center stands about 490 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 1,230 ft, a difference of 800 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Equinox Mountain, about 3,830 ft, 11 miles east.
The section below crosses 12 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 6×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Phyllite, slate, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Early Cambrian, 521 to 1,000 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Phyllite, metasiltstone. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Phyllite. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Black-shale. Age: Middle Ordovician, 459 to 471 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Slate, phyllite. Age: Early Ordovician to Middle Ordovician, 459 to 487 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. 6 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 New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Blind Buck Stream, White Creek, Batten Kill and the Hudson: about 210 river miles.
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 warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 82° in July; winter nights fall to about 10° in January. About 38 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 47° and falls to 28°. The record high is 67°, in 1973; the record low 5°, in 1905. The most rain on this date, 1.45 in, fell in 2009.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Glens Falls Area threaded record (Glens Falls/Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport, 18 miles northwest, 170 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
