A winter storm has been impacting Montana for the past few days bringing falling temperatures, widespread accumulating snow, breezy conditions, and hazardous travel conditions.
The snow began to develop Thursday afternoon and became more widespread Thursday evening and night. Friday was a snowy day across the entire state, and some of the snow that fell on Friday was heavy at times. The snow began to taper off in western Montana during the morning and gradually tapered off in central Montana Friday afternoon through Friday night. The snow lingered in portions of eastern Montana through the night, but came to an end early this morning.
This snow made travel difficult due to slick/snow-covered roads as well as near-whiteout conditions at times due to the combination of falling and blowing/drifting snow. Winds were gusting as high as 30-40 mph during the day on Friday as well as overnight. Multiple slide-offs and accidents were reported across the entire state.
As with every storm, snow amounts varied significantly across the state from just a dusting or nothing at all to almost a foot of snow. The lowest snow totals were in southwestern Montana, while the highest snow amounts were in north-central Montana and around the Billings area (4-11" of snow).
Arctic air accompanied the snow as the temperatures dropped throughout the day yesterday and this morning was the coldest morning since last winter for a lot of locations. Low temperatures this morning were in the teens and single digits below zero and the single digits above zero, with the coldest temperatures in north-central and northeastern Montana.
Chester was actually the coldest town in the entire U.S. this morning with a low temperature of -23°! They also received the most snow from the winter storm with 11".
Tonight will be another frigid night with lows in the -10s, -0s, and 0s. The temperatures will warm back up as we head into next week.
Also, even though the snow is done with, roads will continue to remain slick throughout the weekend, so please use extreme caution if you are going to be traveling anywhere.
