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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; warmer
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
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Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
73° on Nov. 15, 1993, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1972. Next is 73° in 2020.
Salisbury’s center stands about 2,110 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,980 ft to 2,800 ft, a difference of 820 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Davis, about 3,220 ft, 5 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Casselman Formation (shale, clastic), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 13 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.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Shale, clastic. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Claystone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone, conglomerate. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone. Age: Devonian to Late Devonian, 374 to 422 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. 7 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 Gulf of America by way of the Casselman, the Youghiogheny, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,080 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Ohio.
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 19° in January. A normal year brings about 72 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 45 inches of water.
On November 14 Salisbury normally reaches 49° and falls to 32°. The record high is 64°, in 2005; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 0.69 in, fell in 1972.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1972 at Frostburg 2, 10 miles southeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
