The Balta 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
Sunny; warmer
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
Mostly cloudy
Chance of showers
67° on Nov. 16, 2001, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1904. Next is 67° in 2025.
Balta’s center stands about 1,550 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,490 ft to 1,610 ft, a difference of 120 ft: gently rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Fox Hills Formation (shale, sandstone), from the Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 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.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 million years old. About 23 mi of the line.
Sandstone, siltstone, claystone. Age: Late Cretaceous, 66 to 100 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.
Balta has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about −4° in January. A normal year brings about 43 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 21 inches of water.
On November 14 Balta normally reaches 35° and falls to 16°. The record high is 65°, in 1953; the record low −10°, in 1959. The most rain on this date, 0.22 in, fell in 1996.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1904 at Rugby, 13 miles north. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
