By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
Winter may have seemed to whimper out over the course of a seemingly balmy February, but Old Man Winter has decided to use the first full week of March to show that he’s still got some fuel left in the tank.
If February seemed a little warmer than normal, it was, with both the average highs and average lows for the month rising above the norm.
The average high temperature in Glendive for February was 35.7 degrees, a full degree above the normal average for the month, which is 34.7 degrees. While that was not a huge deviation from the norm, the average low temperature for the month was a different story, truly making the month seem almost spring-like for much of it. The average low for the month was 17.2 degrees, which is nearly a four degree deviation from the normal average low of 13.3 degrees.
“We kind of went into an in-between season there,” meteorologist Brad Mickelson with the National Weather Service’s Glasgow reporting station said.
While February was considerably warmer than normal, there were no extremes to speak of, with no day of the month reaching close to any record high temperatures, Mickelson noted. And while February was warmer than usual, it was also snowier than usual.
A total of 6.7 inches of snow fell in Glendive over February, almost double the norm for the month, which is 3.5 inches. Mickelson noted that nearly all the snow for the month fell in just two snow events. The snow left behind a water equivalent precipitation level of 0.5 inches, also nearly double the normal average of 0.26 inches.
With February in the books, the month of March started off looking like spring was just around the corner, with high temperatures reaching into the low 60s over the past weekend. But winter wasn’t ready to go quietly into the night just yet.
Glendive experienced blizzard conditions for much of Monday morning. Weather service forecasters had predicted the storm would drop 1-2 inches of snow on the Glendive area, but when the flakes finally stopped flying, an official total of 4 inches of fresh powder had fallen over the city.
And winter has some more cold and snow in store for the rest of the week. The weather service is forecasting 4 to 6 inches of snowfall for Glendive from Thursday until Sunday, mainly falling on Friday. Low temperatures are predicted to drop into the single digits by the weekend with high temperatures hovering around the mid to low 20s.
After this bout of winter weather, however, hopefully spring won’t be too far around the corner. The weather service’s three-month climate outlook is calling for “pretty close to average” temperatures across Eastern Montana for the rest of March, April and May, Mickelson said, with a slight chance of above normal precipitation.
What does seem certain, Mickelson added, is that the La Niña event in the South Pacific which led to brutal cold and above normal snowfall across Eastern Montana to begin the winter has more or less dissipated at this point, putting the region’s climate back on the path to normalcy, though the local weather may oscillate a bit over the next several weeks as the climate shifts out of that pattern.
“It kind of seems like (the effects of La Niña are over),” Mickelson said. “It kind of seems like we’re shifting back into a neutral pattern. There’s nothing big one way or the other, it’s just trying to figure out what it wants to do.”
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.