Wondering about local weather?

With new settlers coming to the Flathead all the time and many local-born folks growing up in weather ignorance, it seems reasonable to review area weather records. If for no other reason than bar room betting. I have not made in-depth studies of official U.S. Weather Bureau records for 15 years but most of the figures given here are still accurate.

For meaningful comparison, the current known record for cold in North America is an 80 below reading at Prospect Creek, Alaska on Jan. 23, 1971. The coldest temperature on record for here on the Flathead Vally floor was a -38 (elevation 3,000 plus feet) in January of 1950 during a 14-day freeze-out where the thermometer never got above zero. On the other hand, we’ve had at least seven winters in my life when we didn’t have a single reading below zero at valley level, and those balmy winters are scattered all the way from 1920.

My nominee for “worst storm of the last hundred years,” began at 10 a.m. on Jan. 13, 1954. Weatherman Ray Hall was stranded at the airport for several days until his relief man snowshoed in on the 16th, but the storm lasted until the 21st. We had 33 inches of snow that month and most of it fell during that storm which saw winds hit 75 mph. My dad, an excellent driver, was in Bigfork when the storm began and he immediately headed for Kalispell but only made it to the S curve. He spent several days with a farm family there.

The highest wind measured in the valley is 86 miles per hour recorded in December of 1956. The record winter month for precipitation was November of 1897 which had 5.1 inches, and of course the top year for precipitation was 1964 when the general area received liquid blessings to the tune of 22.36 inches, most in the mountains over a couple days and that produced the never to be forgotten flood.

There were not many weather stations in the mountains until after World War II so we don’t know nearly as much about weather up there in the past hundred years as we do down here. The coldest verified reading ever taken in the lower 48 states was minus 70 at Rogers Pass, Montana on Jan. 20, 1954, elevation 5,470. I was repossessing delinquent cars for General Motors on the Highline at Havre and my car froze to the ground. Luckily it was near a warm friendly place that sold human anti-freeze.

Regarding high elevation  weather stations, the old one on Marias Summit used to get horrendous readings for cold, wind, and snow. For example, that champion January storm of 1954 dumped 123 inches of white stuff up there, then to be sure we had enough, Mother Nature gave the pass another 46 inches during a four-day storm in March of the same year. To get some comparison, the annual average snowfall on the valley floor is around 66 inches which is about the same as Albany, New York. Our record local snows fell in 1951-52 for a total of 101.2 inches. America’s highest average annual snow fall is at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, with 113 inches.

The highest official temperature reading in our reading in our valley was 105 degrees taken in August of 1961 at the airport. The old record was 101 degrees on a July date in 1934 when the Weather Bureau was still in downtown Kalispell. South Dakota and Oklahoma have each had a high reading of 120 degrees. California holds the all time record in the U.S. for hot hot hot.

The biggy was 134 degrees taken at the Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, 178 feet below sea level on July 10, 1913.

It might be helpful to keep this column handy for reference on days when five above seems cold.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.