The Balkan 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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−13° on Nov. 12, 2019, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1931. Next is −12° in 1986.
Balkan’s center stands about 1,510 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,460 ft to 1,740 ft, a difference of 280 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Granodiorite to hornblende diorite, locally magmatically foliated (granodiorite, diorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 38×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Banded-iron-formation, sedimentary-breccia. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 2 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Orthogneiss. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 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.
Balkan straddles the Laurentian Divide. Rain on the south side runs to Lake Superior; most of the rest goes to Hudson Bay.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches Hudson Bay by way of Boriin Creek, the East Branch Sturgeon, the Sturgeon, the Little Fork, the Rainy, the Winnipeg and the Nelson: about 1,080 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay. One that lands on the south side reaches Lake Superior by way of Dempsey Creek, the East Swan and the Saint Louis: about 120 river miles. From there it moves on through the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic.
Lakes on the way: Lake of the Woods and Lake Winnipeg.
400 miles of the trip are on the Nelson.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Balkan; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Balkan has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 77° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. About 25 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Balkan normally reaches 35° and falls to 18°. The record high is 62°, in 1953; the record low −5°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.79 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1931 from the Hibbing Area threaded record (Hibbing Chisholm Hibbing Airport, 11 miles south, 170 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
