Hello from the snow! It's June 29th, 2026 and I’m in the Pintler Mountains of southwest Montana, where there is a foot of snow here at about 8,000 feet. This is an unusual storm, but most Montanans know it can snow just about any day of the year here in Big Sky Country.
Just how unusual is this storm? Well, summer snow can happen in the highest of elevations. The Beartooth Mountains and the Beartooth Highway can get shut down at times. Glacier National Park and Logan Pass can get shut down and typically receive snow a few times during the summer. But to see snow at lower elevations down around the mountain passes around 6000 feet, that becomes increasingly rare. To see accumulating snow at that level does not happen very often, only about once every few years. And of course, to get snow down in the lowest elevations, in the valleys and the plains, that can be extremely rare here in Montana.
Some folks in Butte saw snow on the 4th of July. And back in August of 1992, 6-12 inches of snow fell in Helena and Great Falls, but that was a record storm that had record cold.
This is an unusual storm, and this snow is very beneficial, but it will be gone in a few days as it's almost July.
