HELENA — Being average can be a good thing, especially when it comes to the weather.
Sometimes in Montana, we go right from winter to summer. However, this year, when it's all said and done, you could say we had a spring and very close to average one at that.
So far this season, Montana has experienced rain, mountain snow, sunshine, thunderstorms, warm and cold stretches, with some places wetter than normal and some drier.
Helena is more than an inch above normal for the year, with 4.09" of precipitation and a normal of 2.88".
Great Falls has had 5.06", about .75" above normal. Havre is slightly above normal. Lewistown is almost half an inch below normal. Glasgow is almost an inch and a half below normal, and Cut Bank is dry with less than half of the normal 2.20".
Slightly more than 50% of the state is in some level of drought. But looking deeper into the numbers, some of the drought is residual from last year.
The standardized precipitation index, or SPI, is a widely used index to characterize drought on a range of timescales.
The 2-year SPI shows deeper drought along and west of the continental divide.
The 180-day SPI, essentially since the beginning of this year, shows pockets of dry areas in northern Montana but a very wet south-central section.
Over the last 60 days, essentially this spring, the Golden Triangle of northern Montana, the Sweet Grass Hills, and along and north of the Missouri River have been dry, while southern Montana has been wet.
Spring is not over yet, but when all is said and done, hopefully we can say we had a pretty average spring, and a good one.
And now you're a little more Weatherwise.
