Greetings, Flathead Valley! Maggie Dresser here, and I’m back in the Beacon HQ after spending the last eight business days inside the Flathead County Justice Center where I was covering the deliberate homicide trial of 49-year-old Jeffrey Scott Serio. The jury last night delivered a guilty verdict to the defendant, who ran down 67-year-old Raymond Maurice “Mory” Grigg with his vehicle in an Evergreen cornfield last August in a case that centered around arguments of self-defense.
The culture shock is real as I trade courtroom furnishings for a swivel chair and coworkers who are not reporters from other media outlets or gallery spectators. Over the last week in between trial coverage, I’ve also covered a separate deliberate homicide arraignment hearing and a fatal shooting in Columbia Falls.
But let’s take a break from the darker side of journalism and dive into a lighter newsletter topic on this Thursday afternoon: the weather.
It may be May 14, but the National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a winter weather advisory through this afternoon after a cold front swept through the region yesterday, which brought breezy conditions and a few inches of snow to the high county, including Glacier National Park where visitors are starting to trickle in for the tourist season.
With snow levels dropping to 4,000 feet by Saturday, meteorologists say the primary concern is a “raw, blustery environment” with cold temperatures and windchills posing a significant hypothermia risk for backcountry travelers.
The winter weather comes days after an unseasonable heat wave when Kalispell saw 80-degree temperatures earlier this week. But times have changed and freezing levels could drop to the valley floor by this weekend, with high temperatures in the 50s and lows hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit from Sunday through Tuesday, adding a frost risk. Hopefully you haven’t put those tomato plants in the ground yet.
Assuming river levels don’t rise higher than forecast, this means the Middle Fork likely peaked at 14,400 cfs on March 22, months earlier than normal. That’s unless you count late last year when flows reached 20,700 cfs on Dec. 12 during a juicy atmospheric river that dropped record precipitation that nearly brought the Middle Fork to flood stage when the winter had barely started.
But 14,400 cfs is an upgrade from the last few anticlimactic springs when streamflows didn’t even reach 13,000 cfs. The most recent spring that saw any substantial runoff was in 2022, when the Middle Fork peaked at 24,000 cfs on the summer solstice following historic rainfall that caused widespread flooding across northwest Montana.
This year, hydrologists forecast below normal streamflows on the three forks of the Flathead River, which are expected to hover around 80% of normal following an early runoff when hot temperatures caused the low- and mid-elevation snowpack to melt out long ago.
“Overall, there’s just not enough there. We just don’t have enough mid-elevation snow to really contribute to a lot of high streamflows,” NWS hydrologist LeeAnn Allegretto said earlier this month in a spring water supply outlook.
Flathead County Cities Retain Modest Population Growth Amid Overall Slowdown
Data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week captures post-pandemic population growth, which has started to slow in recent years, mirroring national trends
Flathead County Jury Delivers Guilty Verdict in Hit-and-Run Homicide Trial
Jeffrey Scott Serio, 49, was found guilty of deliberate homicide following an eight-day trial. He is convicted of fatally running over 67-year-old Raymond Maurice “Mory” Grigg last August.
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