Category Archives: News

Rivers may reach flood stage after warm weather, coming rainstorm

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From today’s Missoulian . . .

What do you get when you add two warm weekend days, an expected 80-degree high temperature for Monday, and a rainstorm that is expected to move into western Montana late Monday and stay through Wednesday?

A good chance that the Clark Fork, Bitterroot and Flathead rivers will be above flood stage by the middle to later half of the work week, said Corby Dickerson, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Missoula.

“One of the things that is really challenging in advance of these storms is to fully gauge the impact of the heating and precipitation on our flood models,” Dickerson said. “As far as actual numbers and how high the rivers will get there are still a lot of questions.”

“However, given the scenario and time of year, we are shaping up to see a substantial rise in the rivers across Western Montana.”

Continue reading . . .

Wardens looking for wounded grizzly bear near Polebridge

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Oops! Missed this item posted last Friday to the Hungry Horse News site . . .

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating the wounding of a grizzly bear near the intersection of the Red Meadow Creek Road and the North Fork Road north of Polebridge.

FWP wardens and biologists investigated the scene on June 2 and tracked the grizzly but were unable to locate it. A trap was set in the area for the bear.

Residents, hikers and other outdoor recreationists are advised to use caution in the Polebridge area until more is learned about the situation. The investigation is ongoing.

North Fork forecast at flood stage by mid-week at Canadian border

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The National Weather Service tweaked their forecast river levels for the North Fork Flathead River. They now show it cresting just above flood stage for about a day at the Canadian border in the Tuesday-Wednesday time-frame. It’s hard to know what will happen at Polebridge — the gauge seems to be broken again — but the river should at least be pretty close to bank-full by mid-week.

Use the links on the “Flood Information” page to monitor the situation.

Warm temperatures through Monday expected to bring rivers up

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From today’s Daily Inter Lake . . .

The National Weather Service is holding to its forecast for higher temperatures this weekend and for Western Montana rivers and streams to rise sharply in the early part of next week.

Temperatures are expected to reach the lower 70s today and the upper 70s or lowers 80s by Sunday and Monday.

It will be “the warmest temperatures we’ve certainly seen this year,” meteorologist Bruce Bauck said. “It’s going to take a couple of days for this warm weather to start melting this snow … We should see the rivers starting to jump up pretty good in the early part of the week.”…

Across the Flathead River Basin, the snow water content at higher-elevation sites is 226 percent of normal….

Continue reading . . .

Related news: Balmy weekend ahead for Glacier

Snow melting, dams filling, floods feared in West

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Here’s a pretty good overview of the potential flood situation in our corner of the the U.S. from today’s Flathead Beacon . . .

The giant concrete dams of the Pacific Northwest are overflowing with water. Wyoming has deployed National Guard troops to pile up sandbags. A federal official compares the impending situation to a bucking bull ready to storm out of his chute.

States across the West are bracing for major flooding in the coming weeks once a record mountain snowpack starts melting and sending water gushing into rivers, streams and low-lying communities. The catalyst will be warmer temperatures forecast for the next week that could set off a rapid thaw.

Continue reading . . .

Related article more specific to Montana: Schweitzer wants presidential disaster declaration

Obama administration abandons “wild lands” plan

Environmental Issues, News,

From an AP article posted to the Flathead Beacon . . .

Under pressure from Congress, the Obama administration is backing away from a plan to make millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West eligible for federal wilderness protection.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo Wednesday that his agency will not designate any of those public lands as “wild lands.” Instead Salazar said officials will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Associated Press.

Salazar’s decision reverses an order issued in December to restore eligibility for wilderness protection to millions of acres of public lands. That policy overturned a Bush-era approach that opened some Western lands to commercial development.

Continue reading . . .

Health officials issue warning about ticks

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Here’s another sign of spring: ticks.

From the Daily Inter Lake . . .

The Flathead City-County Health Department has issued a warning for people to take precautions to avoid tick bites.

Ticks become most active in spring and the early summer. South-facing slopes where snow melts first and wildlife winter ranges have the highest concentration of ticks.

Montana’s primary tick, the Rocky Mountain hard-bodied wood tick, carries Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. A soft-bodied tick associated with relapsing fever recently has been found in Montana. Black-legged ticks that cause Lyme Disease are not known to occur in Montana.

Continue reading . . .

Deep snowpack, more grizzlies mean more encounters

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Here’s a timely reminder to be bear-aware from today’s Missoulian . . .

There have been a half-dozen encounters between grizzly bears and humans reported in Montana this month alone, a number experts attribute to a growing bear population stuck in the low country because of the deep snowpack.

Most of those encounters didn’t turn out well for the bears. Four times, the grizzlies were shot and killed.

Continue reading . . .

Flooding roller coaster ride continues

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It looks like the flooding roller coaster ride will continue, with river levels dropping for a short time and then rising again by the end of the week. This is reflected in the forecast river levels for the North Fork, which show a slight decrease for the next day or two followed by a steady rise to just at or above flood stage by the end of the week at Polebridge and the Canadian border.

From the Missoulian . . .

Rivers and streams in western Montana were in the recede mode Saturday as cool weather persisted and some expected precipitation failed to materialize…

With warmer weather and rain predicted by midweek, and a good stock of snow still waiting in the mountains, “we’ll probably have most of the rivers going right back up,” said Mark Loeffelbein of the National Weather Service in Missoula.

Continue reading . . .

Record rain but no real flooding yet in Flathead Valley

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High altitude snowpack is still not melting and, in some places, still accumulating, keeping everyone in suspense. The Daily Inter Lake has a good summary of the situation . . .

Record precipitation was recorded in the Flathead Valley and at higher elevations Thursday, but cool weather is likely to halt snow melt and keep local rivers in check for now, according to the National Weather Service in Missoula.

The bad news is that record snowpack at higher elevations will have to melt eventually, creating a potential for serious flooding when higher temperatures arrive in June, Weather Service Meteorologist Bruce Bauck said.

Continue reading . . .

(Note: if you want to keep an eye on high altitude snow depth, check out the “Flathead River Basin” section at the Montana SNOTEL data summary link on the Flood Information page.)