Wild Weather Melts East, Buries West

By Christopher Miller

Heat in the East

Did you melt yet? That’s an odd question to ask someone but is totally relatable with the weather we have been feeling recently.

A freak heat wave has been battering the east coast since Sunday morning and it appears that there may be relief in sight.

Storms this week are to bring the humidity and temperatures down temporarily offering relief from the 100 degree plus “real feel” temperatures that have been making “going outside” feeling like a miserable chore.

Lest we forget the flooding rains of last week?

We aren’t the only ones dealing with some bizarre, unseasonable temperatures and weather patterns.

Snow in the West

The iconic Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park, Montana opened for full travel on June 16. A few days later the roads were temporarily closed due to a June snowstorm.

You read that correctly, a snowstorm in June.

“A summer solstice storm dumped heavy snow on the high terrain of Northwest Montana,” a Montana news source reported on June 22.

More than a foot of snow accumulated above 6,000 feet by the time the storm finished.

Webcams at Logan Pass, which normally show waiting lines of cars waiting to park and hike, were displaying a thick blanket of snow Sunday morning.

Big Mountain nearby in Whitefish, Montana saw 6 inches of snow fall at the summit.

High elevations across the west were surprised by this quick-moving snowtown which created 3-foot snow drifts in parts of Wyoming along the Beartooth Highway outside of Yellowstone National Park. Temperatures also hovered around freezing in Casper, Wyoming, 300 miles southeast.

Volcanic Eruptions

While this story covered most of the contiguous 48 states, it is worthy of mentioning that Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been hurling lava 1,000 feet into the air since late-May.

Other volcanoes “making some noise” recently include Mount Etna in Italy, and activity in an underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon has been showing some activity of “waking up”,
with scientists estimating that it is likely to erupt before the end of the year.

Predictions for Clinton County

We’ve officially crossed over into the summer months with days growing warmer and the nights cooling off. The 45-day forecast through July is looking like a decent mix of sunny days and rain with highs in the low-80s and nights cooling off into the 60s.

I’ll raise a glass to you, hoping that the rainy weeks are behind us and that the miserable humid days are few and far between.