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Drought conditions persist across large parts of the state. Farmers and ski hill operators are wondering — when might the snow begin to fall?
If the weather is your go-to for small talk around the Thanksgiving table, here’s what you need to know about the northern and central Montana drought that just won’t end.
First, the good news: Northwestern Montana has seen a recent spike in precipitation, and, unlike this time last year, southeastern Montana is not experiencing a drought.
The three-month outlook from NWS predicts a seasonal temperature outlook for January, February and March for most of Montana that is leaning colder than average, as well as the possibility of involving more precipitation than usual.
And now the bad news: The Hi-Line and central Montana have been in a drought since late October, according to reports published by the National Weather Service. In early November, the NWS reported that conditions were worsening.
At Showdown Montana, a ski resort near Neihart that serves 50,000 to 60,000 skiers annually, marketing director Avery Patrick said waiting for the weather to turn is “kinda part of the stress, kinda part of the fun.” Snow cameras at the hill on Nov. 21 showed almost entirely bare ground.
“So many businesses in Montana are so reliant on the weather,” Patrick said in a Nov. 20 interview. “And our industry is a part of that.”
Patrick said the mountain should be on schedule to open Dec. 12.
Northwest Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort reported 2 feet of snow over October and early November, but it’s been dry since.
“It’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Chad Sokol, public relations manager for the resort, told Montana Free Press this week.
The mountain plans to open Dec. 4. The resort, which boasts about 500,000 skier visits each year, currently has about 14 inches of snow at its summit. Sokol said he’d always like to see more.
“We think of ourselves as farmers in a way — very weather dependent,” Sokol said. “And that’s just the nature of the business.”
Farmers who face limited precipitation endure the same reality.
In late September and early October, Montana farmers planted winter wheat — a cereal that sprouts in autumn, goes dormant in winter and matures in spring — across approximately 2 million acres, about twice the area of Glacier National Park. Drought could stop it from emerging.
“You need a little bit of moisture to get the winter wheat to sprout and grow,” Walter Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, said in a Nov. 20 interview.
A lack of precipitation could also prove problematic for exposed winter wheat shoots, which insulate themselves with snow in the winter. But Schweitzer’s main concern about the dryness is the potential for wildfire.
“When it gets this dry and the green goes out of the grass — it’s just like kindling,” Schweitzer said. Meteorologist Dan Borsum at the Northern Rockies Coordination Center said dry areas have seen limited fire activity this autumn.
In Great Falls, National Weather Service meteorologist Austin McDowell said enough wet weather to end the drought isn’t on the way, “at least not in the next week and a half or so.”
Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation drought expert Michael Downey said there might be some chance for a cold, wet winter as a result of a La Niña weather system this year, “although La Niña can be kind of fickle.”
“It’s too soon to tell,” Downey said. “We are very much in a wait-and-see mode.”
— Zeke Lloyd
By the Numbers 🔢
The amount of NorthWestern Energy’s new gas plant near Laurel that will be incorporated into its customers’ electricity rates.
On Nov. 19, Montana’s all-Republican utility board voted to add the Yellowstone County Generating Station into NorthWestern’s rate base, allowing the shareholder-owned utility to recoup construction costs and expenses related to a monthslong construction halt that arose from a district court order that temporarily revoked the plant’s air quality permit. That figure also reflects a 9.65% return on equity.
It’s still about $45 million short of NorthWestern’s original request for the 175-megawatt plant, though. The plant inspired two legal challenges — one regarding environmental impacts, another relating to zoning jurisdiction — and a piece of legislation that cleared the 2023 Montana Legislature in a last-minute policy maneuver.
While the elected, five-member commission adopted the majority of the recommendations the Public Service Commission’s rate analysts and attorneys outlined in a 77-page document, the commissioners deviated from the staff’s recommendation and voted to let NorthWestern recoup between $18 and $19 million of expenses associated with fighting environmentalists’ legal challenges and the work stoppage that accompanied the court-ordered permit revocation.
Although the commission’s desires were made clear at the Nov. 19 meeting, they are not yet final. PSC Vice President Jennifer Fielder directed the agency staff to codify her colleagues’ votes in a final order for the commission’s review by Dec. 24. By then, the commissioners and members of the public should have a clear picture of the impacts to customers’ bills.
—Amanda Eggert
Verbatim 💬
“[O]ne night, my 10-year-old was like, ‘No, Mom, I’m good. I don’t have to eat tonight. Sissy can have that.’ And it was literally a piece of bread with peanut butter on it. We shouldn’t have to live in a world like that.”
— K.A., a Butte single mother of four children, ages 4, 4, 8 and 10, describing how the temporary freeze on federal food aid benefits in early November impacted her family. She requested that MTFP refer to her by her initials out of fear that she could be reported to child protective services for struggling to feed her children.
With the end of the federal shutdown on Nov. 12, the Montana state health department announced that payments of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits would be backfilled. Many families and individuals who spoke to MTFP about the lapse in food aid said they greatly appreciated the return of their normal benefits. But they also reflected that the pause on food aid had scrambled the rest of their monthly budgets, forcing them to skip rent payments, sell old toys and dip into savings for car repairs and groceries.
— Mara Silvers
Viewshed 🌄
At a 23-acre facility on the east side of Billings along Interstate 90, cattle trucked in from across Montana and northern Wyoming huff cloudy breath into the chilly morning air. It’s around 8 a.m. on Oct. 30.
Over the next 12 hours, about 300 ranchers and their roughly 4,300 cattle will move through the pens and into the adjoining auction house, shuffling through a series of mechanical gates until they reach the dirt-, mud- and manure-covered floor where David Johnson, Billings Livestock Commission auctioneer, will spatter out a slew of syllables and sounds in an effort to get the best possible price from the scrutinizing buyers’ for the livestock.
READ AND SEE MORE: A morning at one of the state’s busiest cattle auctions.
The Viz 📈
The first phase of the major property tax legislation passed by lawmakers this year has reduced tax bills for most of the state’s residential properties, according to data the Montana Department of Revenue provided to lawmakers this month. As the state’s complex tax system shifts that tax burden elsewhere, the legislation has also boosted bills by millions of dollars for the state’s largest industrial companies.
A revenue department analysis indicates that NorthWestern Energy, the gas and electric utility that is Montana’s single largest taxpayer, is paying $23 million more on its power line infrastructure and $3.4 million more on its generating assets this year than it would have under the prior tax code.
Similarly, BNSF Railway is paying $6.7 million more on its holdings, and CHS, which operates a refinery in Laurel, is paying $1.9 million more. Also paying higher tax bills are the Express Pipeline, which transports Wyoming-bound crude oil from Canada, eastern Montana operations of natural gas company Oneok, and Phillips 66, which operates an oil refinery in Billings.
(The department’s analysis, presented as a breakdown for the state’s 10 largest taxpayers, treated divisions of some companies as separate entities. As such, these figures may exclude portions of those companies that didn’t crack the list of the state’s top-10 taxpayers by size.)
Tax shifts onto large industrial properties were an expected outcome for the property tax legislation, which drew vocal opposition from business lobbyists. Supporters countered that many large businesses had seen their tax bills decrease in prior years — in part because the state’s skyrocketing home values had previously pulled tax burden from industrial properties onto residences.
NorthWestern, for example, saw taxes on its power lines drop by $31 million between 2022 and 2023. As a result, even with a hefty increase this year, the taxes the company pays on its transmission and distribution grid have grown by a comparatively modest $4.7 million since 2021 — an increase that represents a growth rate slower than inflation. (In any case, state utility regulations have the company treat its property tax bill as a pass-through cost when calculating customers’ electric bills.)
Note that in some situations, tax bills are also influenced by factors beyond the state’s tax policy, such as companies expanding or shrinking their holdings. BNSF, for example, has assimilated Montana Rail Link in recent years. State assessors pegged the market value of BNSF holdings at $3.0 billion in 2025, versus $2.1 billion in 2022.
— Eric Dietrich
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
- Are people leaving blue states for Montana? Sort of.
- They are Montana’s largest Republican cities, but Billings and Kalispell will be led by mayors whose campaigns were fueled by mostly Democratic donors following tight November elections.
- A group of nonprofits is petitioning Montana’s utility board to tighten its oversight of NorthWestern Energy’s plan to provide data centers with electricity.
On Our Radar
Lauren — Stripes. Stripes are on my radar. Stripes are fun. Stripes are whimsical. Stripes make me smile. Over the last two weeks, I bought two tops with stripes, which is saying a lot for someone who doesn’t really buy clothes often. Anything that I can put on my body that will bring me joy during these dark, depressing days of 5 p.m. sunsets is a win in my book.
JoVonne — Brawl of the Wild is tomorrow. It’s arguably the state’s most-talked-about rivalry. Whether you are rallying for the Montana State Bobcats (go Cats) or cheering on the University of Montana Grizzlies (go Griz), I think we can all appreciate this photo of Lander the Porcupine at ZooMontana, who made her own guess at who will take home the big trophy.
Zeke — The premise is simple: Watch a haunted house terrorize its tenant from the perspective of his loyal dog. “Good Boy” does a good job.
Mara — In a shocking personality shift, I recently decided to buy my first-ever pair of all-white sneakers (there was a sale, don’t judge me too hard). Even more bizarrely, I’m feeling strangely committed to trying to keep them mostly unadulterated (maybe because all of my other lace-ups are covered with dirt). Luckily for me, there’s a Wirecutter article to help me navigate this new attachment to cleanliness.
Eric — The state Department of Commerce’s updated guidelines for Montana promotional branding were announced way back in May, but for various busy-journalist reasons, I only got to taking a close look at them this week. Among the highlights: One of Montana’s official brand colors is — ahem — “construction orange.”
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