2004 weather: Predictably unpredictable

Flathead County experienced a number of weather extremes during 2004, including record highs, record lows, massive snowfalls and hurricane-force winds.

And that was just in the first three months.

Add in the other nine months and 2004 was a predictably unpredictable year for weather: More rain fell in August than in April; it was hotter on March 30 than it was on July 4; Flathead Lake didn't turn to ice, despite temperatures that were about 60 degrees below freezing.

The year started out with a combination of heavy snow and frigid temperatures. On Jan. 2, 16 inches of snow fell. Three days later, the thermometer at Glacier Park International Airport dipped to a brutal 29 below zero - the coldest temperature here since 1990 and just nine degrees shy of the Flathead's all-time low of minus 38, set in 1950.

As bad as that was, it would have seemed almost balmy in Polebridge: The official temperature there was minus 45 - making it the coldest spot in the nation that day - but local residents said it dropped as low as minus 50.

The high on Jan. 5 was minus 6.

Although temperatures dropped to minus 27 the next day, Flathead Lake still didn't freeze. In some locations, even the shoreline was ice-free.

"It's amazing," said Jack Stanford, director of the Flathead Lake Biological Station, during a January 2004 interview. "It's bloody cold and Yellow Bay isn't frozen, not even a little bit."

Stanford said that the lake had a tremendous amount of stored heat left over from the summer of 2003, when record-high temperatures and an absence of wind caused surface temperatures to soar to 76 degrees. Consequently, he predicted the lake would only freeze if the cold temperatures returned in February - something that didn't happen.

January also saw the worst storm of the year, when more than four feet of snow fell over a five-day period near the end of the month.

The deep powder contributed to at least a half-dozen major avalanches east of Essex on Jan 28. One flowed down from the mountains to the north, across the railroad tracks and across U.S. 2, closing both transportation routes for a few days. Two other slides hit a Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train, derailing 15 cars.

The storm was caused when a moist Pacific storm front collided with a frosty air mass moving down from the Arctic. The two systems met at the Continental Divide and battled back and forth for several days.

"It's like watching two sumo wrestlers," Blase Reardon, an avalanche specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said during a January 2004 interview. "We've got two really big, powerful storm systems, with cold, heavy air east of the Divide and warm, wet air to the west."

Weather sensors attached to the Logan Pass visitor center recorded steady gale-force winds during the storm, with gusts up to 102 mph. Rapid temperature swings of more than 50 degrees also were logged.

Wind events like this "probably aren't unusual on the Continental Divide over the long term, but we haven't seen many the last few years," Reardon said. "These current storm systems may be particularly impressive. We have a lot of temperature and pressure differences on both sides of the Divide."

(Wind gusts as high as 116 mph were recorded at Logan Pass later in the year.)

The weather took a welcome turn for the better two months later. On March 30, temperatures climbed to 73 degrees - the highest March temperature since record-keeping began in 1894.

The remainder of 2004 was equally variable, with one or two record daily highs or lows set almost every month.

It was also an odd year for precipitation: August was the wettest month, with 2.49 total inches, including an end-of-summer deluge that devastated what had looked like one of the valley's best wheat crops in the last six or seven years.

"It was an incredible crop," said Mark Lalum, grain marketing specialist for Cenex Harvest States, at the time. Farmers "will still have a crop to sell, but the price is going to be so much lower, it might be worse than the drought."

Overall, the Flathead received 16.39 inches of total precipitation during 2004, compared to a 30-year average of 17.21 inches. However, that includes an unusually heavy 6.26 inches of combined rainfall in July, August and September - almost 2.5 inches more than normal.

Reporter Bill Spence may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at bspence@dailyinterlake.com