Frigid rainfall creates havoc across valley

The Daily Inter Lake

Freezing rain that turned streets into skating rinks overnight Monday led to school closures and caused the airport to shut down on Tuesday morning.

The change in the weather also sent the avalanche danger to "high."

With most highways in Northwest Montana limited to emergency travel only early Tuesday, all Flathead County schools were closed for the day.

And the blanket of freezing rain forced Glacier Park International Airport to close its runways from Monday night until midmorning Tuesday, canceling several flights.

The latest weather havoc - on the heels of a subzero cold snap over the weekend - was courtesy of warm, wet air from north of Hawaii that poured into Northwest Montana on Monday.

First the soggy weather brought a wet blanket of snow. As temperatures warmed Monday night, that snow was covered with a layer of freezing rain.

"The roads were extremely hazardous throughout the evening. There was a lot of freezing rain," said Steve Herzog, the Montana Department of Transportation's Kalispell area maintenance engineer.

By 8 p.m., the Montana Department of Highways began issuing emergency-travel-only warnings for area roads.

By early Tuesday morning, the emergency designations applied to all major roadways.

"Travel was not conducive to school buses or anybody else," Herzog said. The emergency-travel advisory, in part, prompted the closure of schools across the Flathead Valley.

But warmer temperatures rapidly improved road conditions. "It did straighten up after sunup and early this morning," Herzog said Tuesday afternoon.

As the freezing rain turned to simply rain, most emergency restrictions were lifted at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday.

By then, County Superintendent of Schools Donna Maddux had already decided to shut down schools for the day.

"This morning it was emergency travel only," she said late Tuesday afternoon. "That was the call we were given, so we close."

In talking with administrators across the area, she called the county road department and then the Department of Transportation, which had issued the emergency travel advisory.

"Emergency travel means that you are an emergency responder or taking someone to the hospital," Maddux said.

"School is not an emergency."

There were no serious injury accidents, despite slick roads. Two semi trucks had trouble navigating the ice between Essex and West Glacier, but no one was hurt.

Kintla Lodge on Big Mountain was briefly evacuated for a water-line break. Other water problems were reported in the valley. Power was the problem in Happy Valley, where ice and snow knocked out electricity for several hours.

Troy police asked local authorities to find and stop a bus driver carrying the Troy Trojans Monday evening. The team had permission to stay the night in Kalispell because of hazardous road conditions, but the bus driver had the students safely close to home before getting that message.