After a weirdly warm December, some Montanans may be wondering where all the snow is. Great Falls National Weather Service meteorologist Austin McDowell reminds us to hold our horses.
“I definitely urge people to be patient,” McDowell told MTPR in a phone interview. “When it does get here, it can thump really hard.”
2025 opened much the same way it’s going out, with temperatures warmer than usual. Montanans got a winter wake-up call starting in mid-January, when a powerful snow event dumped as much as two feet in parts of central Montana. A cold snap followed in February that plunged wind-chilled temperatures as low as 45 below in Central Montana.
Mountain snowpack heading into fire season was about 80% of normal in most of the state. But large wildfires never really materialized in Western Montana this year. McDowell says that was largely thanks to spurts of cooler weather and rain, in addition to snowmelt.
“I would definitely encourage people to not put all your eggs in one basket when considering how bad fire season’s going to be next year just based on snowpack,” McDowell said.
Though wildfire season was more subdued, severe summer weather still rocked across the state. Meteorologists issued more than 550 severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings — the most since 2001. McDowell says the largest hailstone recorded in Montana this year was slightly smaller than a softball. That fell near Winnett in June.
Fall weather was much warmer than usual, particularly in Western Montana. That worked in tandem with an atmospheric river in December that dumped inches of rain in the northwest region, flooding Libby and other communities.
McDowell says models still favor a colder, wetter-than-normal winter ahead, but not by much.
