The Balm 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.
Mostly sunny
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny
Partly cloudy
36° on Nov. 11, 2025, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1976. Next is 39° in 1977.
Balm’s center stands about 140 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 80 ft to 150 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undifferentiated sediments (sand, clay), from the Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old.
The section below crosses 3 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, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, dolostone. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Sand, clay, phosphorite. Age: Middle Miocene to Pliocene, 2.6 to 16 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.
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 Balm reaches Tampa Bay and the Gulf of America by way of Bullfrog Creek: about 17 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Balm; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Balm has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in July; winter nights fall to about 51° in January. About 54 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Balm normally reaches 79° and falls to 58°. The record high is 87°, in 1993; the record low 43°, in 1984. The most rain on this date, 0.87 in, fell in 2023.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1976 at Tampa Bay Area Wfo, 9 miles west-southwest, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
