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:

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.

Tumbleweed Connection: And Easterners Thought The Snow Accumulation Was Bad

Yes, I know, you winter weary achy backed snow shovelers in the Midwest and Northeast. You can't bear to clear one more flake of snow after shoveling your driveway day after day, week after week for months.  

A Colorado neighborhood buried in tumbleweeds
earlier this week. 

But it could be worse! Yes, it could!  You could live in the community of Fountain, near Colorado Springs.

Residents there returned home from work one day last week to find tumbleweeds piled up to 10 feet high against their houses. 

They couldn't get in or out.

These tumbleweeds have been a particularly terrible problem in windblown, drought stricken areas of the western United States this winter.

And what do you do with the mess? It's not like the tumbleweeds are going to melt eventually. Plus, they could catch fire and cause a nasty wildfire. The snow in your driveway is not going to cause a fire, trust me.

For now, the residents have piled the the tumbleweeds in a common area, but if the wind blows in the wrong direction, it could pile them against the houses again.

Tumbleweeds have become a real problem in the western United States this winter. They grew like crazy, especially in areas that got a lot of rain last summer. Then it got dry, and they're blowing around and piling up and getting to be a nasty headache.

You could burn them, but only if it's not dry or windy out.  The city of Kennewick, in eastern Washington suggests stomping them or using  heavy duty string trimmer to break them into bits so you can somewhat more easily dispose of them in the trash.

Some cities are spending weeks and many thousands of dollars with heavy equipment trying to get rid of the tumbleweed invasion, which is the worst in memory for a lot of Western towns.

It was as bad as it gets recently in Clovis, New Mexico, as you can see from this incredible local news vieo out of New Mexico:



Here's the local news clip from Colorado: