The state is bracing for yet another round of dangerous wildland fire conditions Saturday, which will soon be followed by unseasonably cool temperatures.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Corby Dickerson says the weekend weather forecast is "gonna be a tale of two different weather patterns."
Saturday’s forecast has the firefighting community on edge. Western Montana will be very hot, dry and windy. A Red Flag warning is in place tomorrow afternoon for northwest and west central Montana. A Fire Weather Watch is posted for southwest Montana where critical fire conditions will be most prominent.
Dickerson describes Sunday as a less-intense transitional day; still warm and dry, but with light breezes and higher humidity.
Monday however will seem like an entirely different season.
"When you get to Monday night, you’re going to feel like we probably skipped fall, too. It’s hard to find systems this strong in the climatological database this early in September," Dickerson says.
That means a Canadian cold front will usher in powerful, potentially damaging winds in northwest Montana. The Glacier Park Region will get a triple whammy of wind, snowfall, and sub-zero wind chills. Valleys could see widespread rain and highs in the 50s to low 60s.
So is this a wildfire season-ender?
"There’s still a lot of September left, so I’m not sure if I’m going to say it's a season-ending event," Dickerson says, "but if we can get through this weekend without adding more fire to the ground we going to be sitting in a much better place going into the middle part of September."
Gardeners: cover those veggies and flower beds Monday night into Tuesday morning. Temperatures could dip to near freezing.
Summer-lovers fear not, it’ll warm back into seasonal highs by mid-week.
