Heat Wave

Glacier Park Melts Fast and Early, Rivers May Flood

By Kate Downen, 5-18-06

Summer—actual summer—doesn’t normally hit Northwest Montana until mid- to late June, at which point lakes are warm enough for swimming and Glacier Park’s temperatures are fully tourist-friendly. The past week’s ultra-hot weather seems to have hurled us into a premature Actual Summer, triggering avalanches in the Glacier Park and runoff problems on the park’s famous Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Glacier Park’s Logan Pass, typically wintery this early in the season, currently has soaring temperatures around 65 degrees. West Glacier saw a record high 89 degrees on Tuesday. The warm weather, which is expected to continue into next week, caused a Class 3 avalanche on the southern slopes of Heaven’s Peak that, according to a U.S. Geological Survey technician, was ‘big enough to take your house and chew it up into small pieces.’ He also added that in high elevations, over an inch of water is melting a day.

The InterLake reports that Flathead River—the Middle and North Forks too—are expected to approach flood stage on Friday. The Yaak River, west of Libby, may exceed flood stage as early as tonight.

Even with all this talk of water, we’ve got a potential summer of fire ahead if this continues.

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