BUTTE — A powerful winter storm with high-wind warnings and hazardous weather conditions, expected to impact Montana, is prompting the Butte School District to cancel classes on Thursday, March 12, with classes set to resume on Monday, March 16.
According to MTN Meteorologist Mike Heard, a tremendous amount of moisture will flow over the Pacific NW into Montana Wednesday evening through Saturday evening. This will create a significant boost to mountain snow with high water content snowfall. 1’ to 5’ feet of mountain snow is possible over western Montana.
The National Weather Service issued a WINTER STORM WARNING for all areas West of the divide, into central Idaho, and in NW Beaverhead County from 6 pm Wednesday to noon on Saturday. In general, for SW Montana, 1’-2’ of mountain snow is possible with 2’-5’ feet of snow in the Glacier Park region. Valley snowfall will be highly varied, with 1”-6” possible. That alone is cause for alarm; however, adding in wind gusts 40 to 60 mph down in the valley floor, and 60-80 mph gusts over higher ridge lines will create the potential for significant blowing snow and visibility travel hazards with visibility down to a ¼ mile at times.
The National Weather Service issued a WINTER STORM WATCH for central and northern Montana from Thursday evening to Saturday evening. This will likely be upgraded to a winter storm warning soon. Possible snow accumulations above 4,500’ of 8”-18” are possible along with wind gusts 40 to 60 mph.
The Absaroka-Beartooth region could see 1’-3’ feet of snow with peak wind gusts of 80 to 90 mph at higher elevations.
The entire state of Montana is under a HIGH WIND WARNING. For SW Montana, that high wind warning is from midnight Wednesday to 6 pm Thursday. Central and eastern Montana, the warning is from Thursday morning through Thursday evening. In the warning area, sustained wind 35 to 45 mph with peak wind gusts at times up to 60 to 80 mph. In classic high wind belts east of the divide, peak wind gusts up to or over 80 mph are possible in SW Montana.
This is an extreme weather event, and the combination of moderate to heavy snowfall along with extreme wind will create difficult to hazardous travel conditions Thursday through Saturday morning. At this time, travel is not recommended.
Looking into next week, another significant weather event is coming to the entire western U.S., and that is a rapid warming trend with possible daytime max temperatures reaching the 70s, and a few isolated low 80s are possible.
This will create a rapid snow-melt event by the end of next week. It’s still too early to pull the trigger on possible flooding issues, but if you live in a flood zone, pay close attention to the forecasts this weekend into next week
