BOZEMAN – Beautiful weather pattern over Montana Friday afternoon with a High-pressure ridge overhead. Unfortunately, that is coming to a quick end.
The next weather maker is a strong Pacific cold front will begin to dig into western Montana Saturday afternoon and reach SW Montana by early evening. Ahead of the front look for increasing wind and thunderstorms.
The Storm Prediction Center has a “marginal” risk for strong to severe thunderstorms from SW Montana east of the divide through central and NE counties. Some storms could produce damaging wind gusts and/or damaging hail Saturday afternoon and evening.
Other side effects will be brief heavy rain and frequent lightning Saturday afternoon and evening.
Once the cold front passes through by Sunday morning temperatures will be cooling below normal and there will several rounds of wrap-around rain bands. Some could produce heavy rain Sunday into Monday.
Snow levels could fall down to 7,000’ Sunday night with accumulations possible for higher peaks in SW Montana.
The above on-demand STORMTracker video forecast will show you the timing of thunderstorms and what areas could see heavy rain Sunday. Updates to this forecast are coming up Friday evening at 5:30 pm and 10 pm on KXLF and KBZK.
