The Balsam 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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68° on Nov. 17, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1915. Next is 67° in 1953.
Balsam’s center stands about 1,380 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,320 ft to 1,420 ft, a difference of 100 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Foliated to gneissic tonalite, granodiorite, and diorite (tonalite, granodiorite, diorite), from the Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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.
Granite, granodiorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Tonalite, granodiorite, diorite. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Alkalic-volcanic. Age: Neoarchean, 2.5 to 2.8 billion 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 Balsam reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Prairie and the Mississippi: about 2,180 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lake Pepin.
1,750 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Balsam; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Balsam has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −1° in January. A normal year brings about 60 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 29 inches of water.
On November 14 Balsam normally reaches 37° and falls to 21°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low −9°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.54 in, fell in 1951.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1915 at Grand Rapids Forestry Lab, 17 miles south-southwest. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
