High wind warnings are affecting Cascade County, making travel difficult for high-profile vehicles as Montana experiences another bout of strong winds that meteorologists say are typical for the region.
"Yeah. So really, the main reason why in Montana we have strong winds is because we get those strong, down sloping winds we called Chinook winds. So that's mainly east of the Continental divide," meteorologist with the National Weather Service Great Falls Amanda Wilson said.
"If you kind of think air as like a fluid. It's always constantly moving. And they want to encounter the mountain sometimes either gets blocked by the mountain, or if the flow aloft is strong enough, it can go over the mountain and down across the plains," Wilson said.
"As the air kind of flows on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. It compresses on the ways down, and that's a warming process. And so, that can that kind of results in slightly stronger winds. And it's also a warmer wind as well. So that explains why we have a lot of these high temperatures sometimes in the wintertime," Wilson said.
While strong winds are common in Montana, Wilson noted that December's weather patterns were unusual.
"In December we did have that one you know really widespread wind and rain across the state were pretty much most areas in Montana got these really strong winds. That was definitely highly unusual to have that wide scale of winds," Wilson said.
