The Selmer 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.
9° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1923. Next is 13° in 2019.
Selmer’s center stands about 460 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 430 ft to 590 ft, a difference of 160 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Mount Peter, about 700 ft, 9 miles north-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Coon Creek Formation (sand), from the Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sand. Age: Cretaceous, 66 to 145 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Tertiary to Quaternary, less than 66 million years old. About 0.3 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 Selmer reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cypress Creek, the Hatchie, Porters Creek, Cypress Creek and the Mississippi: about 990 river miles.
800 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Selmer; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Selmer has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 90° in July; winter nights fall to about 29° in January. About 59 inches of rain fall in a normal year, with about 1 inch of snow.
On November 14 Selmer normally reaches 62° and falls to 39°. The record high is 81°, in 1985; the record low 17°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 2.73 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1923 at Selmer, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.