Kalispell emerges from third-snowiest winter on record

After the past weeks’ long-awaited warm-up in the Flathead Valley, the sodden, flattened lawns, dwindling patches of icy slush and bands of sand and gravel lining the roads offer the only lingering signs that Kalispell has finally emerged from its third-snowiest winter on record.

From December through February, 76.6 inches of snow fell at the National Weather Service’s official weather gauge in Kalispell, just 4.2 inches shy of the all-time record snow total that buried Montana’s northernmost major city during the winter of 2008-09.

The observations, recorded by the agency’s weather station at Glacier International Airport, are part of the historical dataset begun in 1899.

According to Missoula-based Weather Service meteorologist Lance VandenBoogart, the three-month snow total was 93 percent above the norm.

This past winter was also Kalispell’s seventh-coldest. The average temperature during the months of December, January and February was 17.6 degrees — 6.7 degrees below normal, but well above Kalispell’s average temperature during the winter of 1978-79, which averaged a frigid 12.0 degrees.

While last winter’s statistics line up with the pre-season predictions as a La Nina system developed along the southern Pacific Ocean, VandenBoogart said he hesitates to link them together.

“We were in a La Nina [event] for the first half of the winter, and then we kind of went to more neutral conditions for the second half,” he said. “Given that it wasn’t a strong event, it’s hard to say whether that was a driving factor or not.”

La Nina events, in which below-average surface temperatures in the Pacific drive global weather patterns, typically bring lower temperatures and higher precipitation to the Northern Rockies.

VandenBoogart did note, however, that Western Montana received an unusual number storms that dumped significant snowfall on the valleys. While higher elevations typically get the lion’s share of snowfall in a given storm, he said several of last winter’s weather events dropped roughly equal amounts in the valleys, owing to high-moisture systems arriving from the south.

“We seemed to get a lot of systems that favored, especially for the first half of winter, they were kind of warm frontal systems that favored valley snow. Our mountain snowpack wasn’t that impressive for the first half of winter,” he said. “We didn’t have the kind of sub-tropical jets that come in with mountain snow that give the valleys rain.”

While the snow cover has largely disappeared from the valleys, Northwest Montana’s high-elevation water supply remains in good shape. Snow telemetry gauges in the Flathead River Basin’s headwaters registered 108 percent of normal snowpack, as of April 3. The Kootenai River Basin was at 103 percent of normal.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.