A cold front brought widespread accumulating snow to a lot of Montana from Thursday evening through Friday morning, with some scattered snow showers and areas of light snow sticking around through Friday night.
This was not a major snowstorm by any means, but the timing of this snow led to significant impacts for the Friday morning and even the Friday evening commute.
Roads were snow-packed during the morning commute and icy during the evening commute. There were also whiteout conditions in some areas due to the combination of falling and blowing snow as winds were gusting as high as 50 mph.
Numerous slide-offs and collisions were reported throughout the state on Friday, with I-90 East between Belgrade and Bozeman actually being shut down for a brief period of time as there were a ton of slide-offs.
The mountains in central Montana received the most snow from this storm, with Showdown picking up 11" of fresh powder and Bear Paw Ski Resort receiving over a foot of snow.
The lower elevations near the mountains also did pretty well, with the foothills of the Snowies receiving 4-8" of snow and Red Lodge receiving close to a half foot of snow. The Cascade and Ulm area also got hit pretty hard with about a half foot of snow falling there.
Most lower elevation locations in central and eastern Montana picked up between a coating and 4" of snow from Thursday evening through Saturday morning.
High pressure is going to provide us with sunshine and dry conditions for the rest of January, but a colder and snowier weather pattern will return for the beginning of February.
In the future, we will try to continue to do storm recaps, but in order for these to work, we need snow reports from all of you! You can submit snow reports to your local National Weather Service Office, or you can email weather@krtv.com. When providing us with a snow report, please let us know how much snow was measured, when you took the measurement, and your approximate location.
When measuring snow, make sure you do it in an area that has been cleared of snow, in a wind-sheltered area (when possible), and make sure you take at least three different measurements, and then take the average of those measurements.
