Brrrrrrrrrrrrr - record setting - brrrrrr!!

Though much of the weather data for February in Malta is still pending, the town of Saco's winter has been one for the record books and when the rest of the data is tabulated, there will probably be some records set for the rest of Phillips County as well.

In Saco during February, the average temperature was -6.4 degrees, making it the second coldest month on record since 1966 (as far back as the data goes), according to Brian Burleson of the National Weather Service in Glasgow. The record cold month in Saco occurred in January of 1969 when the average temperature was -7 degrees. As far as snowfall, February of 2019 saw the second most snow in Saco since the data has been collected as 17.3 inches of snow hit the town. The most snow measured 22.5 inches in January of 2011.

Burleson said that keeping records for the city of Malta only goes back to 1996 at the Glasgow office, but said that his office has a weather collecting site seven miles east of Malta at Bowdoin and that data goes back to 1959. Once that data has been collected there will be another story written in the PCN. That said, the data going back to 1996 in the city of Malta says that February of 2019 was the coldest month on record. The old record of 2.9 degrees for February 2018 was shattered this past February when the average temperature was -3.5 degrees. The site in Malta received 11.8 inches of snow, in February, making it the second snowiest February on record (the record for the location is 19.8 inches last year) and the eighth snowiest month on record - the snowiest month in Malta was December 2010 when 25.5 inches fell.

Much above average temperatures and mild winter conditions in December continued through much of January before the bottom fell out in February, according to Patrick Gilchrist of Glasgow's office.

"We started getting a lot of arctic air coming down from the North Pole area," Gilchrist said. "That made for some rather frigid temperatures and a fair amount of snow as well."

Gilchrist said that temperatures for February have consistently been about 25-degrees colder than usual across the Hi-Line with considerably more snow. December's precipitation was near average for most of Montana, but January was a mixed bag, and into February, many areas in Montana set records for snowfall.

February marked the first time as a whole, since May of 2017, that the state of Montana has been drought-free, Gilchrist said.

This week's 10-day forecast in the PCN (see the bottom of page 1A) says that by Wednesday the temperatures should no longer go below zero - though they won't rise above freezing either - with a 60-percent chance of snow on Saturday (10-percent chance the rest of the week) and Gilchrist said the month of March is predicted to be about 30-to-40 percent cooler than normal.