The Balfour 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
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9° on Nov. 15, 1969, the coldest reading for this week of the year since 1898. Next is 12° in 1933.
Balfour’s center stands about 2,130 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 2,060 ft to 2,690 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Pilot Rock, about 4,440 ft, 15 miles west-northwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Henderson Gneiss, from the Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Gneiss. Age: Early Cambrian, 524 to 525 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Gneiss, mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic, 542 to 1,000 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Mica-schist. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Biotite-gneiss, mica-schist, calc-silicate-rock. Age: Neoproterozoic to Cambrian, 487 to 1,000 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Schist, phyllonite. Age: Devonian to Permian, 252 to 422 million years old. About 2 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Silurian, 438 to 439 million years old. About 1 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 Balfour reaches the Gulf of America by way of Mud Creek, the French Broad, the Tennessee, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Guntersville Lake, White Lake (historical), Pickwick Lake and Cummings Lake.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Balfour; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Balfour has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 84° in July; winter nights fall to about 26° in January. A normal year brings about 7 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 59 inches of water.
On November 14 Balfour normally reaches 59° and falls to 34°. The record high is 77°, in 1985; the record low 14°, in 1920. The most rain on this date, 1.75 in, fell in 1957.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1898 at Hendersonville 1 NE, here. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
