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. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 68° in 1930.
Salem’s center stands about 170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 110 ft to 490 ft, a difference of 380 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Prospect Hill, about 1,160 ft, 7 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Lacustrine and fluvial sedimentary rocks (clay, silt, sand), from the Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 7 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 20×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Clay, silt, sand. Age: Pleistocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Early Miocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 23 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Basalt. Age: Miocene, 5.3 to 23 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Late Eocene to Oligocene, 23 to 38 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Miocene to Late Miocene, 5.3 to 16 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gravel, boulders, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 1.0 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale. 1 smaller unit 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 Pacific Ocean by way of Pringle Creek, the Willamette and the Columbia: about 180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Willamette Falls Hydroelectric Power Reservoir.
100 miles of the trip are on the Columbia.
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 Mediterranean climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 35° in December. About 40 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 54° and falls to 39°. The record high is 68°, in 2001; the record low 12°, in 1955. The most rain on this date, 3.00 in, fell in 1896.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 from the Salem Area threaded record (Salem Airport (Mcnary Field), 3 miles south-southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
