Big Chill

Forecast for tonight, Dec. 6

Tonight’s forecast contains some numbers we don’t see very often. Minus 46 F, wonder what that feels like. Should I venture outside in the night to find out?

Cold Mornings

8:00 am temp: 1
Yesterday: 18/-4
Normal: 32/18

Steam rising off the lake this morning. It was 2 degrees F according to our thermometer.

It’s been cold here this week, and will get even colder. A second Arctic front is expected to arrive tomorrow, bringing wind and lows of -16 and -19 F the next couple nights. That’s serious winter the likes of which we haven’t seen in several years.

I’m thinking it looks good for the lake to freeze this year. That usually means some good skiing.

Snowshoeing on the mountain

8:00 AM temp: 7
Yesterday: 38/11
Normal: 37/23

Winter evening on Big Mountain

I took the dog and the showshoes and headed up to the mountain after work. It’s a good start to the winter for the mountain. There’s 50 inches of snow at the summit, and a week of cold weather ahead. The snow making machines were running full blast today. Opening day is Dec. 7, so we locals can tromp all over the mountain until then.

Somebody loves the snow

Tough Birds

8:00 AM temp: 49
Yesterday: 62/46
Normal: 66/39

Spring green

I heard some noise this morning and went outside to shoo away any woodpeckers that were attacking the roof or exhaust vents, as they occasionally do, and saw two flickers sparring. Ah, Spring.

Someone is excited to have plants and flowers on the deck this summer. But mid-May is still a bit early for potted plants in this climate – a low of 30 is forecast in a few days. I’ll have to baby them.

I’ve recently returned from the red rock country of southern Utah. Arrived home at night and woke up to Spring, definitely with a capital ‘S’. The view out the window has turned aggressively green. The aspen are especially vivid.

Fortunately the male robin who was valiantly conquering his reflection last Spring, and making a mess of the windows on one side of the house, has not turned in a repeat performance. I was in the process of buying the house at that time and it was vacant, so he was free to bully his reflection undisturbed. Hopefully having residents in the house will dissuade him from picking up the gauntlet again.

 

Seasons, cycles, and change

8:00 AM temp: 39
Yesterday: 52/22
Normal: 55/31

Spring visitors

The deer are back. And so am I, after travels south to find the sun. The grass is starting to green up, but there is snow in the hills and the forecast calls for an inch or two of snow here in the valley today. The fluctuations of spring.

There is something comforting about watching the ebb and flow of the seasons. It feels eternal, timeless, certain. Yet, this is an illusion. The earth bears the marks of historic variations in climate, from ice ages to warmer periods. But no change has occurred as rapidly as the one that we are currently in the early stages of. What will spring look like here in 10 years?

The mountain

8:00 AM temp: 30
Yesterday: 44/16
Normal: 47/26

A February morning on the mountain

Despite the mild winter, the local ski hill has had a pretty good snow year. As of today, Whitefish Mountain Resort, formerly known as The Big Mountain, has a snowpack of 112 inches (285 cm) at the summit (elevation 6817 ft or 2078 m), and 30 inches (77 cm) at the village area (elevation 4464 ft or 1361 m). That’s a little less at the bottom of the hill than in recent years, but very respectable at the summit.

Most of the lifts and ski runs are on south-facing slopes, which may make the area particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures in coming years. Fingers crossed that we have many more winters of skiing there.

Spring wind

8:00 AM temp: 33
Yesterday: 49/28
Normal: 46/25

Sun and clouds

It snowed this morning and clouds obscured the mountains for much of the day. In the afternoon the clouds lifted, the wind picked up and there were pockets of sun.

The afternoon wind sent waves smashing up against the ice, breaking off chunks. I watched a pair of Canada geese standing on a piece of ice about the size of a surfboard, bobbing in the waves, then navigating their way among the ice chunks back to open water.

Receding ice

8:00 AM temp: 45
Yesterday: 54/30
Normal: 45/25

For Tess it’s swimming season again. For the rest of us…well, we’ll wait.

The ice by City Beach shrank noticeably the past couple days, but hasn’t broken up yet. Usually the Whitefish Lake Institute has a fundraiser where they suspend a large rock above the ice and people guess which day in the spring the ice will melt enough that the rock falls into the water. Typically that day is in April, but that part of the lake never froze this year.

Early spring

8:00 AM temp: 32
Yesterday: 55/34
Normal: 44/24

I’m seeing lots of goldeneyes on the lake again. They are hanging out along the edge of the ice, sometimes sitting on the ice and sometimes in the water paddling along and bobbing under.

Yesterday at dusk we saw a large flock of geese on the far side of the lake, lifting off in waves, circling, and landing again. They looked small for Canada geese, making us wonder if they could be migrating snow geese. It was too dark and they were too far away to tell. We’ll keep our eyes open the next few days.

There’s big melting going on with this warm spell. It’s supposed to reach 55 again today. I can see patches of ground in the yard again, reminding me that I need to do something about landscaping – last summer’s repair work on the house left much of the yard torn up. Time to make a plan, a good task for early spring.

The melt

Puddles on ice

There are puddles on top of the frozen part of the lake today. The forecast highs for the next couple days are in the 50s. How much longer will this ice last?

Warming up the Big Sky

8:00 AM temp: 37
Yesterday: 36/27
Normal: 43/26

A March 5 article in The Missoulian had an article by registered nurse Beth Schenk about the effects of climate change on human health. A factoid that caught my attention: Montana has warmed an average of 1.5 to 1.7 degrees F over the past century. Schenk cites NOAA as the source for this data.

I have been digging around various web sites associated with NOAA and the National Weather Service, looking for this type of data. Yikes, there is a complex, not always user-friendly tangle of products and data out there. While wandering through the climate cyber-wilderness, I came across some graphs from the National Weather Service that are a good visual representation of recent local temperatures compared to normal.

The first chart shows at a glance that there is a whole lot more red than blue, meaning a whole lot more temps above normal. The really interesting piece of information is in the second chart: the green line shows the mean difference from normal is 1.73 C. That’s 3.1 F warmer mean temps for the past month (Feb 11-March 11).

Slush ahead

8:00 AM temp: 30
Yesterday: 49/27
Normal: 44/24

It’s snowing now (11 AM) but is supposed to turn to rain this afternoon and through tomorrow. Ugh. Have I mentioned that March is my least favorite month here?

There are big chunks of ice floating in the lake today. Presumably they broke off from the sheet of ice covering the City Beach area and floated out into the lake. I got out the telescope to take a look at some gulls standing on a piece of floating ice across the lake. There is definitely more bird activity on the water the last week or two.

No pretty pix to post today, but I added some graphs to the Monthly temps page. The one for this winter is interesting, so I’ll post it here as well.

Snowy peaks

8:00 AM temp: 33
Yesterday: 47/21
Normal: 43/23

Cris settles in for lunch, looking into Glacier National Park at the Livingston Range

Tracks

It was a bluebird day Saturday and we were dazzled and humbled by the peaks of the Livingston Range as they strutted their stuff.

As usual there is a lot more snow in the North Fork than at home. Taking skis off and taking a step landed you thigh-deep in snow in a hurry.

The snow depth seemed typical for this time of year. I checked the snowpack data for Montana, compiled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. They don’t have a data collection site for the North Fork of the Flathead River, but they do collect data for the Flathead River basin as a whole, which on March 10 was spot on at 100% of median for moisture in the snowpack (snow water equivalent).

We saw some interesting tracks winding through the meadows. My guess is two mountain lions. There’s an intermittent straight line, which I’m guessing is a tail dragging. Anyone else have a theory?

Snowpack research team

Good day, Sunshine

8:00 AM temp: 25
Last 24: 46/21

Sunny Day

It’s sunny. It’s Friday. ‘Nuff said.

It’s here!

This weekend I will be heading out into my extended back yard, the North Fork area along the western edge of Glacier National Park. This is one of those blessed pockets of America that is still off the grid (no water or electricity service for the folks who live there) and has no Internet or cell phone coverage. I’m taking cross-country skis and showshoes with me, so I’ll be checking out the snow pack. Typically it is colder and snowier up there than here in the Flathead Valley. I’ll report back when I return.

March…the lion part

8:00 AM temp: 32
Last 24: 35/32

New snow March 7 2013

In addition to the hard ice covering the bay at City Beach, there are patches of a thin slush on the lake this morning. The forecast high is 39, so the slushy patches will probably disappear by afternoon. There have been other similar days this winter. Looks like that’s as close to ice as most of the lake will come this year.

A new snow is always beautiful, as is the early morning blue light of such wintry days. We always have a lot of gray weather here in the winter, but it feels to me like this winter has been particularly gray. There is sun in the forecast the next couple days…I hunger for it.