Kalispell ties record for low temperature

The Daily Inter Lake

A month ago, Flathead Valley residents were cranking up the air conditioning, standing in front of open refrigerators and doing anything else they could think of to cool off in triple-digit heat.

Now the days are warm, but the nights are downright chilly. Early on Saturday morning, the mercury fell to 38 degrees in Kalispell, tying its old record set in 1997. The lowest temperature recorded Sunday was 44 degrees shortly after 2 a.m. - which was not a record.

Also on Saturday, the Polebridge low of 27 beat the previous record low for that date - 28 degrees tallied in 1997.

"The skies cleared out, and Kalispell is kind of in a valley location, so inversion sets up," said meteorologist Matthew Foster of the National Weather Service in Missoula. "There was a lot of heat radiating into space."

A cold front moved through the area at the same time, he said, which added to the early morning chill.

"But the main reason is we're pretty far north," he said. "This month and September, we lose a lot of solar heating, just because we're transitioning from the longest day of the year to the shortest day of the year. … We're losing three minutes a day of sunlight."

Flathead Valley residents shouldn't anticipate many more near-freezing nights this week, Foster said. Daytime temperatures in the low 90s will continue through Tuesday, and the valley may see rain Thursday.