One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
The Climate Production Center is predicting a wetter than usual November, December and January over the next three months in the northwest including 40-percent wetter in portions of central and eastern Montana. Graph courtesy of the National Weather Service.
Though much-needed precipitation recently fell across Montana helping to extinguish the many forest fires burning across the Treasure State, in Phillips County, precipitation totals are still way down from normal in the county as drought continues in the eastern portion of the state.
"Through yesterday, Malta has had 6.25 inches of precipitation, normal would be 11.18 inches, so you are 4.93" below normal," Tanja Fransan from the National Weather Service's Glasgow office told the PCN. "Zortman is at 9.36" of precipitation; normal is 14.96" or 5.6" below normal."
Fransan explained that the other stations around the county don't report daily, so we won't have the data until the first or second week into October.
Tom Frieders, from the National Weather Service's Billings Office, said the change in the weather pattern at the end of September "couldn't come soon enough" citing the Blacktail wildfire that started in the Crazy Mountains located in Lewis and Clark National Forest south of Two Dot on September 12.
"Just four days later the incident team was dealing with deep snow," he said. "What a change we saw and that was the kind of conditions we were hoping for."
Frieders said that Montana suffered the 11th driest August on record adding that many areas in the state saw record driest August. The hot and dry conditions shifted in September and in much of Montana, the percentage of normal precipitation climbed to 150-to-300-percent above normal, though he added that in areas along the Hi-Line the precipitation amounts were not as large and as of September 19, much of Phillips County was still considered in severe, extreme or exceptional drought conditions.
Frieders said the one month temperature outlook for October in Phillips County was expected to be a little warmer than usual,but added that over the next three months, Montana is trending toward a wetter than normal winter with predictions of 33-to-40 percent wetter than normal.
"We are trending toward precipitation that would be above normal on the Northern Rockies including Montana and Wyoming. So good news there and hopefully that will be verified and we can continue accumulating precipitation across the region."
Reader Comments(0)