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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11° on Nov. 13, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1971. Next is 14° in 1996.
Salem’s center stands about 1,200 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,000 ft to 1,470 ft, a difference of 470 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pinnickinnick Mountain, about 1,440 ft, 13 miles east.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Dunkard Group (sandstone, siltstone, shale), from the Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 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 26×. 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, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous to Permian, 252 to 324 million years old. About 17 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Quaternary, less than 2.6 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 Salem reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Salem Fork, Tenmile Creek, the West Fork, the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 2,120 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 Salem; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Salem has a hot-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 85° in July; winter nights fall to about 21° in January. A normal year brings about 23 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 49 inches of water.
On November 14 Salem normally reaches 56° and falls to 31°. The record high is 77°, in 1989; the record low 11°, in 2019. The most rain on this date, 0.85 in, fell in 1993.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1971 at West Union 2, 11 miles west, 390 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
