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.
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy; cooler
Chance of showers; cooler
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
70° on Nov. 14, 2025, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1964. Next is 69° in 1981.
Balfour’s center stands about 1,610 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,550 ft to 1,630 ft, a difference of 80 ft: gently rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Dogden Butte, about 2,280 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cannonball Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Paleocene, 56 to 66 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 53×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Paleocene, 56 to 66 million years old. About 13 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million 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.
A raindrop that lands in Balfour reaches Hudson Bay by way of the Wintering, the Souris, the Assiniboine, the Red River of the North and the Nelson: about 1,150 river miles. Past the border it runs north through Canada to Hudson Bay.
Lake on the way: 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 Balfour; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Balfour has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about −3° in January. About 18 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Balfour normally reaches 36° and falls to 17°. The record high is 70°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 0.55 in, fell in 1994.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1964 at Drake 9 NE, 12 miles east-northeast. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
