HELENA — A storm expected to arrive Tuesday may help slow the spread of the Montana’s still-burning wildfires, but it probably won’t be a knockout punch to end the unusually long fire season, federal meteorologists said.
The National Weather Service forecast the storm would bring cooler temperatures, rain and snow to elevations above 4,000 feet in parts of the state.
But weather service meteorologist Marty Whitmore in Missoula said it would deliver only a glancing blow to western Montana and mostly miss northern Idaho, where massive fires are still burning.
“Where we have the bulk of our fires, we don’t expect any rain out of this event,” Whitmore said.
Even in the places where rain is predicted to fall, there won’t be a lot, said meteorologist Dave Bernhardt in Great Falls. A quarter-inch to a half-inch was forecast to fall in the low elevations, translating to about 5-6 inches of snow in the mountains, Bernhardt said.
Paula Short of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation said fire managers have been watching the forecast closely, but hopes have mostly fizzled that this will be the storm they have been waiting for.
“I think that we are all cautiously optimistic, but the reality is the precipitation isn’t going to be there in significant amounts,” she said.
Dry weather has extended a wildfire season that had already begun earlier than normal this year. There were still at least 20 wildfires burning in Montana as of Tuesday, plus another 23 in Idaho, according to the Northern Rockies Coordination Center.
There are not a lot of new fires and the cooler weather and shorter days have helped improve fire conditions, but the problem of tinder-dry fuels remains, Short said.
“It’s going to take a lot more than one wet weekend to get us out of the fire season for good,” she said.
It has been a record-breaking dry spell in parts of western Montana. September was the first time Hamilton has gone an entire month without precipitation since records have been kept, Whitmore said.
And if Missoula does not get any rain Tuesday, it will tie a record dry streak of 42 days going back to the late 1800s, he said.
One benefit of the storm, however, is that it was expected to bring northerly winds that should clear the smoke and haze that has been hanging over much of western Montana from the wildfires there and in Idaho.
“We should have some of the clearest days we’ve seen in a while,” Whitmore said.