If You Were In Montana This Weekend, Your Hat Probably Blew Off

A common sight around parts of Montana amid high winds Saturday.
Photo from the Great Falls Tribune. 

While we in Vermont were still under calm winds and murky skies, let's just say itwas pointless to wear a hat in much of Montana on Saturday. And in much of the West this weekend for that matter.

Up in Montana, parts of the state often get strong chinook winds, which are warm, dry downslope westerly or southwesterly winds off the Rocky Mountains.

However, the wind definitely got ridiculous in Montana Saturday, with gusts in th 80 to 90 mph range in some towns during the worst of it.

Yeah, definitely hang on to your hat weather.

At Great Falls, Montana, winds gusted to more than 40 mph for 29 hours straight.  The wind gusts there peaked at 82 mph and for several hours gusted to 60 to 70 mph or more.

The warm winds melted what little snow was on the ground.  The hurricane forced gusts caused dust storms and blowing smoke from rapidly spreading rangeland fires.  The dust and smoke blocked visibility on many open highways, leading to a number of crashes, KRTV in Great Falls reports.

The high winds closed Route 87, a major highway in the region.  And of course there the reports of trees and wires down everywhere.  

The downslope winds also created record warmth in some areas of Montana, with highs getting into the 60s.

The wind shifted into the north and died down a LOT Saturday night. But it got colder and started to snow.  A more typical February deal up there.

The high winds shifted into the Southwest on Sunday. Gusts last night were expected to be as high as 90 mph in the high mountain passes east of Los Angeles.  Widespread gusts of 50 to 60 mph were blowing across much of the desert Southwest.

All that wind out west is a hint that the weather pattern is changing to a stormier one. Already, a snowstorm has blossomed in the central Rockies, including in the Salt Lake City area, where they could see up to ten inches of new snow.

This stormier pattern will eventually get to us in Vermont late in the week. It's still too soon to say  how much precipitation we're going to get, or what kind.

Here's a news clip from KRTV in Great Falls regarding Saturday's wind:

More Extremes Due, But Vermont To (Mostly) Escape Again

What looks like a narrow line
of showers with a cold front
in Oklahoma uesterday was
a line of bugs, moarch butterflies,
a few birds and other critters getting
a push southward by the oncoming
north winds as they migrated
south for the winter. 

The wild ride of weather in the United States over the past month has been something. It's one that brought all-time record October record highs to no fewer than nine states and dozens of cities in the eastern United States.

It's also a pattern that brought record September snows and cold to the northern Rockies and southwestern Canada.

No rest for the weary, as a number of potential events are shaping up over the next week.  Details are uncertain, but I think the weather might end up in the news again.  Just probably not here in Vermont.

The heat wave in the Southeast is finally, slowly breaking down, pushed away by inevitable October cold fronts.

One of those fronts will arrive here in Vermont Monday and slow down. This front will grab lots of deep moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dump a good slug of rain on most of us.  Places in southern Vermont and from the Green Mountains east will easily get more than an inch of rain out of this.

We'll have to watch this a bit, because parts of north central and northeast Vermont got a lot of rain last week, too. There could be some minor flooding, but nothing too horrible is expected.

While we enjoy some pleasant October weather after the front clears on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, some other interesting weather systems could take shape. How wild things get really kind of depends on whether things come together in just the right way.

A cold front, stronger than the one that is affecting us Monday, will take shape in the northern Rockies. That threatens them with another possible snowstorm.

Our friends in Cut Bank, Montana, an epicenter of the epic snowstorm in September, can expect another dump and near record cold by Tuesday and Wednesday. Luckily, the snow won't be as deep, and the cold not as long lasting as the last episode.

This time, though, forecasters say it's possible snow could spread over much of the Dakotas and a good chunk of Nebraska later in the week. It'll also be quite windy in these areas as the quick cold blast moves in.

The cold front will eventually reach us next weekend, but at this early stage I don't expect any super big drama in New England from that. But stay tuned.

Meanwhile, a weird storm is expected to get going and stall well off the southeastern New England coast. A strong ridge of high pressure - the same system that should give Vermont fine weather during the middle of the week -looks like it wants to trap that storm in place.

It's also possible that the storm, sitting over the warm Gulf Stream waters, could take on some subtropical characteristics.

Depending upon where the storm sets up and the position of the high pressure in southeastern Canada, coastal regions of southern New England could get a long period of persistent swells, wind and rain, which could end up causing some beach erosion. Again, we'll see!

The image I put in this post is interesting to us weather geeks, and maybe you.  It's been awhile since a decent cold front moved through Oklahoma, but one went through yesterday.   As it pressed south and the winds shifted into the north, and pushed a band of migrating insects, monarch butterflies and a few birds southward with it.

Weather radar picked up what looked like a thin line of showers heading south with the cold front. But that line of "showers" had no rain. It was those bugs and other critters being pushed southward by the onslaught of autumn.

Pretty cool!

U.S. Extremes Coming Up: Montana Blizzard, Southeast Bakes, Stormy Middle

This weather pattern sill encourage record heat in the southern
and eastern United States, possibly a historic snowstorm in Montana,
and lots of storminess in the central and northern United States
over the next few days.

We've been talking about a weather pattern all month that features a strong ridge of high pressure in the Southeast, with a southward dip in the jet stream in the west.

That has contributed to record heat in the southeastern third of the nation, cool conditions in the northern Rockies, and some very stormy and wet Central Plains.

This weather pattern is about to get turbocharged.

The heat ridge in the East will intensify, and the dip in the jet stream out west will get much more pronounced in the next couple of days.

That means the heat records will really fall in the East, while a possibly historic blizzard hits Montana. Yes, a blizzard. In September.

The Montana situation is especially interesting and dangerous. Six inches to three feet of snow is likely Friday night into Monday, with deep, accumulating snow likely even in valley cities like Great Falls, Helena and Butte.

Leaves are still on the trees in these communities. The heavy, wet snow and strong winds with this storm are likely to cause tons of tree damage. The National Weather Service office in Great Falls, Montana is telling residents that "the combination of heavy snow with strong northeast wind will cause severe to extreme impacts to agriculture, trvel, recreation and likely power outages."

A few isolated mountain locations could get up to four feet of snow. It looks like it could well be a historic storm for parts of Montana.  It does snow in northern Rockies pretty frequently this time of year, but nothing close to what's forecast.

Meanwhile, the East Coast will bake in summerlike heat by early next week. (Probably not up here in Vermont, though. I'll get to that in a minute.)

Highs could touch 90 degrees as far north as Boston, and record heat will  keep summer going in much of the east.

Halfway between the western winter and the eastern summer, expect a lot of rain. Which is terrible because the central and northern Plains have basically been flooding since March. And it's going to continue.

A good two to five inches of rain, with locally higher amounts are expected in places like eastern Nebraska, much if Iowa and Wisconsin over the next week. That'll worsen flooding that's still ongoing. (Part of Interstate 29 in eastern Iowa were still under water as of this morning.)

Bottom line: The weather will really be in the news over the next few days. Look at it this way: It'll be a slight distraction from impeachment news, right?

VERMONT IMPACTS

The Green Mountain State will be on the northern edge of the big eastern heat ridge, which will make for a tricky forecast over the next few days.  It's unclear how far north the heat will get.  There's a good chance that they some days will have quite a large temperature gradient from south to north across Vermont.

There's also a chance some days will be much warmer than forecast. Or much cooler than forecast. Don't you love uncertainty?

To make things even more challenging for forecasters, bits and pieces of the storminess across the central United States will ride up and over the heat ridge in the east. That probably means they'll go right over Vermont or close to it.  So there will be frequent bouts of showers.

Because these disturbances will be moving so fast, it will be hard to judge the timing of them that far in advance. At this point it doesn't look like any of these rainy spells between now and the middle of next week will be all that heavy.  It also looks as if northern area of Vermont would get more rain than southern areas.

Expect the unexpected here in Vermont over the next week or so.

Montana Blizzard, Chicago Winter Storm. NOW?!?!?!?

Red sky in the morning means to take warning. This was the ABC News 7
webcam in Chicago at dawn today. By this afternoon,  this same spot
will likely be seeing a late season snowstorm.

Boy, has the northern tier of the nation taken a giant step backward into winter!!

A compact but pretty wound-up storm is setting off a winter storm of all things in a narrow stripe in southern Minnesota and Wisconsin, northern Iowa and northern Illinois, including Chicagoland.

The northern half of the Chicago metro area in particular looks like it's really under the gun. There, three to eight inches of heavy, wet snow is expected to come down later today.

This storm is, of course, weird for Chicago in the heart of spring. The average date for the last one-inch snowfall in Chicago is March 17. This one, if an inch accumulates, will be close to a record. The latest one-inch snow in Chicago on record came on May 3-4, 1907.

Some trees in Chicago are starting to leaf out. That means the heavy, wet snow accumulating on those nascent leaves, and expected gusty winds, will damage a few of those trees.

So yeah, this is pretty unwelcome in the Second City and other areas under the winter storm warning. Some areas could see snowfall rates of one to two inches per hour.

Meanwhile, a separate storm has triggered a blizzard warning of all things in north-central Montana. Two to five inches of late season snow propelled by gusts of 55 mph expected Sunday won't make for   a terrific day there, that's for sure.

Here in Vermont, we're not getting off scot-free, but at least there's no blizzard coming. Rain showers will change to snow showers in the mountains today, leaving behind a dusting to a couple inches way up near the summits by Sunday morning.

That storm from Chicago will weaken as it heads east, but will still drop a cold, light rain Sunday in southern Vermont, with a little snow possible up high.  A hard freeze is likely statewide Sunday night, so if you got ahead of yourself in the garden, protect those plants!

We've also launched ourselves into a long period of colder than normal weather in Vermont that will last more than a week.  Spring is on hiatus for the foreseeable future, I'm afraid.

Most Of World Has Been Warm Lately, But Great Falls, Montana Is New Global Ice Box

The departure from normal of temperatures across the globe Tuesday.
Blues and purples are below normal, oranges and reds are
above normal. Almost everywhere except the United States was warm.

It's been pretty damn cold over the past month in much of the United States and parts of southern Canada.

That's especially true in the northern Rockies and northern Plains of the United States and adjacent areas of southern Canada. Those areas have been consistently the coldest place on Earth, relative to average.

Of course, this area isn't THE coldest spot on Earth, but just the furthest below normal, just to be clear.

Montana seems to be the epicenter of this extreme and long cold wave.

In the opening days of March, some areas in this region had their coldest temperatures on record for the month. Elk Park, Montana was 46 below this week. If verified, that would be the coldest temperature on record for the entire state for March.

Cities in Montana that set their all-time March low temperatures this week include Eureka at -23, Miles City at -31 and Livingston at -27.

Elsewhere, North Platte, Nebraska reached 25 below early this week, setting a March record there.

To give you an idea of how miserable it's been in Montana, let's dig deep into the city of Great Falls. On Sunday, the city had a high of -8 and a low of -32, which is incredible 50 degrees below normal. I don't remember the last time I've seen a departure from normal that big anywhere.

For comparison, if it were 50 degrees below normal here in Burlington, Vermont yesterday, the high and low temperature would have been -14 and -32, and that would have established a record for the coldest day of any day in any month on record. Thank goodness that didn't happen and it was only 11 degrees colder than average Wednesday!

Back in Great Falls, each of the past 31 days have been at least 15 degrees colder than normal and 20 of them were 30 or more degrees chillier than average. You think it wouldn't snow much at such low temperatures, but Great Falls had 32.3 inches of snow in February. It's certainly been a winter to remember in Montana.

It'll sort of warm up in Great Falls and the rest of Montana later this week, but it will still be a good 10 to 15 degrees colder than normal. The number of consecutive days below freezing there is now 32 days, which is a new record, and that streak will grow this week.

I'm sure Great Falls is lovely, but I'm glad I'm not there.

As the Weather Channel points out, the United States is sticking out like a sore thumb in global temperature maps this week, as you can see in the illustration in this post. Cold air which is normally up in the Arctic has been displaced southward by a ridge of high pressure over and near Alaska.

That high pressure has brought record warmth to the northern tip of Alaska. Most of the Bering Straight off the west coast of Alaska between the Pacific and Arctic oceans is ice-free, the first time anybody has seen such conditions in that part of the world this time of year.

Despite the cold in central North America, preliminary data indicates that February, 2019 will likely come in as the world's third warmest on record. Part of the counterbalance came from Alaska, much of Siberia, parts of western Europe and Australia, which have reported record warmth over the past month or so.

Early Winter In Western Canada, Northern U.S. Rockies

Too early? A snowy, very difficult commute in Calgary Canada this
morning. Photo via @mookalicious on Twitter.   

In early October here in Vermont, we start to look toward the mountain peaks for the first few dustings of snow.

There's nothing like that this year, and no snow on the summits is in the forecast for the foreseeable future.

Sure, it's chilly and wet today, but it's surely not snowy.  The forecast calls for near to above normal temperatures for at least the next week.

It might even get almost summery for a time next week. There's a chance it could hit 80 degrees i Vermont then. We'll see.

But it's fall. If it's warm in one place, it has to be chilly in another. Sure enough, western Canada and the northern Rockies fit that wintry bill.

Actually, while we roasted in September,  most of Canada was unusually chilly. Only the southeastern part of that country was warm. Yellowknife, in northwestern Alaska, had its coldest September on record and Calgary had its chilliest September since 1985.

Overnight, four to eight inches of snow, with locally higher amounts, really screwed up the morning commute in Calgary. I don't know about you, but I'm not quite ready for a morning like that yet. Let's wait until after Thanksgiving here in Vermont, at least.

The cold air and snow has been starting to bleed across the Canadian border into places like Montana.  In Billings, 1.4 inches of snow came down Sunday. Yes, it was still September. Today, in the high elevations around Glacier National Park, winter storm warnings are up as some areas in the peaks will get more than 18 inches of snow.

If anything, this winter pattern will intensify out west next week. It's possible a wide area of the northern Rockies and the western Dakotas could get quite a bit of snow. 

It's a little early for that, but not unheard of in that part of the country.

Here in the Northeast, a northward bulge in the jet stream will keep us protected from any real snow, at least through the middle of the month. It's possible the highest peaks could get a little rime ice or flurries in that time, but there will be no snowflakes in the valleys, like we can get this time of year.

Don't worry, winter will come and some of us will probably regret it.

Breaking News: Winter's Coming, Eventually

Snow and wind contributed to car crashes aroumd Calgary,
Alberta, Canada on Monday. Photo bu Gavin Young/Calgary Herald

Headline here scares you, doesn't it?

No, our current relatively warm weather here in Vermont is not about to end. In fact, it's going to turn warmer, with even a slight chance of a record high or two in the region this coming Sunday and/or Monday.

But the inevitable forces of winter are gathering, and soon enough, we will be shoveling snow again

The signs of it are in the northern Rockies of the United States and the Rockies and high plains of Canada, especially in Alberta.

They're getting a ton of snow out there. That snow is NOT heading in our direction, but it's a reminder that the cold shoe of winter could drop at any time.  (And yes, we've had rare snowstorms here in Vermont this time of year in the past.)

Around Calgary, Alberta, snow and strong winds created near blizzard conditions and the occasional white out on highways in that region. About four inches of snow was expected yesterday around Calgary, and winds gusted to 35 mph or more.  Parts of the Trans-Canada highway near Calgary were closed during the worst of the storm.

Meanwhile, winter storm warnings are up Monday and early today for much of northern Montana.  A few inches of snow with winds gusting to 45 mph were affecting parts of the High Plains of Montana this morning. Havre, Montana had several hours of heavy snow with winds gusting as high as 44 mph  Monday afternoon and early evening.

The weather will improve in Montana today, but the snow is just a harbinger of what's to come for much of the nation as we sink deeper into fall. Some of you will like this, some of you won't, but eventually we'll all have to deal with it.

Odd Strong Storm Spawns Huge Manitoba Tornado, Wyoming Snow

The tornado in Manitoba, Canada was so strong it ripped
up asphalt on a road. Photo by storm chaser Greeg Johnson.  

A low pressure system, strong for this time of year, is causing all kinds of unusual weather in the Northern Plains of the U.S., parts of the praries in south central Canada, and in the Rocky Mountains.

Storm systems are usually weak this time of year, but this one really wound up.

Yesterday, it spawned a gigantic, really strong tornado in Manitoba. The tornado stayed on the ground for nearly three hours, says CBC, the Canadian broadcaster. 

That's unusual, since tornadoes, especially in that part of the world, typically stay on the ground for no more than several minutes.

Luckily, it hit sparsely populated areas, because it was a powerful one It ripped asphalt up from one road, for example.

I have a mixed mind about the video, below, as these Reed Timmer and his group of tornado chasers get much too close to it repeatedly. But it is an incredible sight. Especially the multiple vortices rotating within the main tornado.

News about very odd snow, high winds and other features below the video of the Manitoba tornado



Behind the front, it snowed in Montana and Wyoming. Yep, snow in July.

Snow in July is not unheard of in the highest elevations in the Rockies, but it's pretty rare. Especially since this one got down to 8,000 feet above sea level and hit quite a few areas.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Glacier National Park were among the areas to report snow.

It was cold in the valleys, too. Around 3 p.m. Monday, it was raining hard in Missoula, Montana with a temperature of 47 degrees. In July!

Don't worry, summer is not over in Missoula. By this weekend, daytime highs there will be in the mid 80s.  

It probably would have been a good idea to break
out the rock skis in Jackson Hole, Wyoming yesterday.  

On the bright side, all that rain that came down  with this storm in many of Montana's lower elevations, putting a dent in a drought and helping suppress forest fires burning in the region, says the Great Falls (Montana) Tribune.

Of course, the heavy rain falling on burn areas increased the risk of flash floods, since vegetation was gone.

Another strange aspect of this storm is the strong winds blowing across eastern Montana and the western Dakotas. 

Such strong west and northwest winds are common there in the winter, but not this time of year.

Leaves on the trees act as little sails, so when these strong winds hit trees in full leaf, it will pull them down more easily than in the winter. So the northwestern Plains are bracing for power failures and such today.

As the storm keeps moving into Canada, summer weather will gradually make a return to the areas that got this July winter reminder.