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.
Mostly sunny
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Chance of showers
Partly cloudy
Showers likely
68° on Nov. 17, 1953, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1892. Next is 68° in 1999.
Balsam’s center stands about 1,260 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,220 ft to 1,360 ft, a difference of 140 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Slate and graywacke (slate, graywacke), from the Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old.
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.
Slate, graywacke. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2 billion years old. About 24 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.
Balsam straddles the St. Lawrence Divide. Rain on the north side runs to Lake Superior; most of the rest goes to the Gulf of America.
From the center of town, a raindrop reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Prairie and the Mississippi: about 2,110 river miles. One that lands on the north side reaches Lake Superior by way of the East Savanna and the Saint Louis: about 70 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 Pepin and Aitkin Lake.
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 cold desert climate. Summer afternoons average 78° in July; winter nights fall to about −2° in January. Barely 0.0 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Balsam normally reaches 38° and falls to 23°. The record high is 64°, in 2005; the record low −7°, in 1919. The most rain on this date, 1.24 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1892 at Sandy Lake Dam Libby, 8 miles west. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
