The West 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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3.62 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1899. The next wettest, 3.27 inches, fell in 1992.
West Salem’s center stands about 1,100 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,010 ft to 1,210 ft, a difference of 200 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Maxville Limestone; Rushville, Logan, and Cuyhoga Formations, Undivided (shale, siltstone, sandstone), from the Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 46×. 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, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Devonian to Carboniferous, 324 to 422 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Devonian, 359 to 422 million years old. About 0.8 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 West Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Muddy Fork, Lake Fork Mohican, the Mohican, the Walhonding, the Muskingum, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,960 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Salem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Salem has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 83° in July; winter nights fall to about 19° in January. A normal year brings about 49 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 42 inches of water.
On November 14 West Salem normally reaches 50° and falls to 34°. The record high is 71°, in 1971; the record low 11°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 3.11 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 from the Mansfield Area threaded record (Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport, 24 miles west-southwest, 190 ft higher). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
