Cold drops to minus 15 in Flathead Valley

2014 is departing on a chilly note in Northwest Montana.

An Arctic front brought bone-chilling cold to the region Tuesday, with lows as extreme as 15 below zero at Glacier Park International Airport and minus 27 at Polebridge.

The thermometer early Tuesday dropped to minus 20 in Creston, minus 14 at the summit of Big Mountain, minus 6 atop Blacktail Mountain, minus 26 at Many Glacier and minus 19 at Swan Lake.

The cold, however, is nowhere near record levels. The record Flathead Valley low for Dec. 30 was a numbing minus 35 in 1968.

And this week’s cold snap will be short-lived compared to the historic subzero stretch of weather 36 years ago.

The Christmas season in 1978-79 featured 10 low-temperature records in 11 days. It started with minus 29 on Dec. 29, 1978, and the lows for the next week-and-a-half were startling: minus 31, minus 33, minus 37, minus 24, minus 27, minus 24, minus 24, minus 30, minus 28, minus 19 and minus 26. 

The high temperature on Dec. 31, 1978, was 20 below zero.

Those numbers won’t be reached this week, according to the National Weather Service, as the cold moderates slightly in the next few days.

Today’s high in the Flathead Valley is predicted to be 10 degrees with a low of minus 1 overnight.

The New Year’s Day forecast is for a high of 9 degrees and low of 4 degrees overnight Thursday.

Daytime highs should warm into the 20s this weekend.

Saturday’s snowfall of 5.1 inches in Kalispell set a record. The old record for Dec. 27 was 4.1 inches set in 1917.