Winter storm closes schools, snarls roads
Crews at at Glacier Park International Airport on Monday clear and pile snow. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)
Sean Delaney of OHS’ Body Shop prepares to pull a truck out of a ditch on Walsh Road on Monday in Columbia Falls. Delaney said OHS’ had six drivers responding to requests for assistance on Monday morning, and he alone had 14 calls after he finished with this truck.
Crews work to clear a taxiway on Monday morning at Glacier Park International Airport. The airport was hit with rain and temperatures in the mid-30s Sunday, which became problematic that night as temperatures dropped and everything iced over. (Brenda Ahearn photos/Daily Inter Lake)
A severe winter storm battered Northwest Montana over the weekend, dropping up to three feet of snow in some areas, closing schools and creating widespread traffic impacts that included the closure of U.S. 2 and the BNSF Railway tracks south of Glacier National Park.
Early Monday morning, the Montana Department of Transportation shut down all traffic on U.S. 2 between West Glacier and East Glacier after wind-blown snow in the mountain corridor covered the only east-west highway connecting the region to the Rocky Mountain Front.
By late afternoon, officials had reopened the western portion of the snow-bound road to local traffic as far as Essex. But the department’s Kalispell division maintenance chief, Justun Juelfs, said through traffic was unlikely to resume until late Tuesday morning, at the earliest.
“We do have rotary blowers on both ends, working from both sides and trying to get two-way traffic again,” Juelfs said. But he added, “We’re averaging about a mile an hour.”
About 16 to 18 miles remained as of Monday afternoon, and Juelfs expected the road crews will have to use the industrial snowblowers on the entire stretch of highway between Essex and Marias Pass.
The BNSF rail line that parallels the highway was shut down Sunday between Whitefish and Shelby. In an email, company spokesman Ross Lane said rail company crews on Monday found eight avalanches that had reached the tracks, but no damage had been detected. A total of 11 snow slides came down along the rail corridor, he said.
Later Monday evening, Lane said the company hoped to open the tracks by 3 p.m. Tuesday, depending on the weather and ability of crews to remove debris from the avalanche paths.
Juelfs said BNSF was planning avalanche-mitigation work to clear snow from above the rail line from 9 to 11 a.m. this morning, using concussion charges detonated from a helicopter above the snowpack.
“There will be no MDT staff within that segment just in case any of those avalanches actually make it to the highway,” he said, noting that 11 a.m. would be the earliest normal traffic could resume along the highway.
“That’s assuming the avalanche-mitigation work doesn’t send a large amount of snow down on the road, because that cleanup effort would take a lot longer,” Juelfs added.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said the rail closure affected passengers on the company’s Empire Builder route, which stretches from Chicago to Seattle and Portland.
“We’re returning a trip to Whitefish this afternoon that was originating in Seattle and Portland, via Spokane, on Saturday,” Magliari said Monday, adding the approximately 90 passengers on the train made it as far as Essex before they were forced to turn back.
He also said a west-bound train from Chicago had to head back to Shelby after traveling as far as Browning.
East of the Continental Divide, storm impacts were even more severe. Highways east of Browning were temporarily shut down or in “severe” status, and the extent of ice and snow prompted the Blackfeet Tribe to declare a state of emergency Monday afternoon.
Blackfeet Tribal Business Council Chairman Harry Barnes’ emergency declaration urged residents to “shelter in place” and prioritize resources to protect individuals with medical conditions and elderly residents.
While the storm’s impacts varied throughout the region, many residents in Northwest Montana woke up Monday morning to ice-covered roads and low visibility as high wind gusts created snow drifts and blowing snow in some areas.
The state’s transportation department warned of “extreme driving conditions” throughout the region, including highways in the Columbia Falls area and west of Kalispell.
Juelfs said Monday morning that roads became especially dangerous overnight after temperatures climbed well above freezing Sunday afternoon.
“Yesterday, that turned the roads wet in a lot of areas, but then we had a pretty significant cool-off and that put a lens of ice over the road and that was covered with blowing and drifting snow,” he said. “If there isn’t an absolute need to travel, I would suggest that people stay home and give our guys an opportunity to get out there, push things back and improve driving conditions.”
At Glacier Park International Airport, ice forced the runway to shut down for an hour Sunday night, per Federal Aviation Administration requirements. But airport director Rob Ratkowski said only one flight was delayed during that time, owing mainly to a rare snowstorm in Seattle.
Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.