BOZEMAN – Good news in the short-term forecast! A cold front is passing through Montana Monday afternoon producing cooler temperatures with a NW flow aloft.
This will help produce cooler temperatures through Tuesday, but a gradual warming trend returns by Wednesday with above normal temperatures again by the end of the week.
This cold front will produce a few isolated thunderstorms, mostly from Great Falls to Billings but SW Montana should remain on the dry side.
The other bit of good news with this wind shift aloft is that wildfire smoke will be forced to drift to the South and away from SW Montana through at least Tuesday. As the flow returns out of the west look for increasing temperatures and increasing wildfire smoke by the end of the week.
Monday morning's update on fires in our region has the Moose Fire north of Salmon, ID up to over 35,000 acres but the much smaller Hog Trough Fire near Hamilton remains under 900 acres.
