By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
The bitter cold over the past weekend led to at least one new weather record for the Glendive area, and though temperatures have warmed this week, another winter blast is expected to arrive this weekend and deliver a white Christmas for the region.
Saturday was incredibly frigid across Eastern Montana, the coldest day of 2016 by far and a record-setter for Glendive. The mercury officially bottomed out at minus 28 degrees early Saturday morning with wind chill factors in the minus 50s, according to Rex Morgan, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Glasgow reporting station.
That temperature reading was good enough to set a new record low for the date of Dec. 17. The previous record for that day was minus 26 degrees, set back in 1976.
Glendive’s lows on Saturday were in line with most of the rest of northeast Montana. Sidney was a little warmer, recording a low of minus 26, while Glasgow was a little colder, recording a low of minus 29.
At least Glendive was doing better than Mosby, located in Garfield County between Jordan and Winnett, where the mercury bottomed out at a mind-numbing minus 41, marking the lowest temperature recorded in northeast Montana that day, according to Morgan.
Temperatures have warmed into the low 30s this week, but the reprieve won’t last long, as the weather service is tracking another major winter storm system which is expected to begin arriving over the region by Saturday evening. While forecasters are still modeling the storm, Morgan said “it looks like” Glendive and most of Eastern Montana are certain to get a white Christmas, with snow beginning Saturday night and lasting through most of the day Sunday.
The system will also bring another blast of cold air which will drop lows into the single digits with a Christmas day high of about 10 degrees in Glendive.
“There’s some uncertainty as to where exactly this storm system is going to track, but there is a significant system coming in this weekend that could bring 6-7 inches (of snow),” Morgan said on Monday. “It looks right now like it’s going to track a little bit to the south and hit harder around the Billings area, but we should see some snow out of it.”
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.