A significant amount of monsoon moisture moving through the West is headed to Montana's wildfires this week. While most of this fire season has been fairly quiet, the last week featured several fires that have burned thousands of acres. The Windy Rock fire south of Helmville is the largest and most noticeable fire close to Helena and Great Falls. This fire will continue to be active the next few days but moisture is moving toward Montana. A few isolated thunderstorms fired on Monday afternoon. Moisture will increase slowly over the next few days with Thursday and Friday the best chance at more widespread moisture with rain falling on wildfires. Tuesday will be sunny across northeast Montana, but mostly cloudy across the southwest part of the state. Scattered showers and thunderstorms will be confined to southwest Montana, south and west of Helena. Highs will range from the 70s southwest, to about 90 up on the Hi-Line. The wind will be light. Wednesday will have more cloudcover with showers and thunderstorms creeping north. Helena will likely be dry with storms just to the south of the capital. Highs again will be in the 70s and 80s. Wednesday night that moisture will spread northward through the state. Thursday will be mostly cloudy with widespread showers and thundestorms especially across central and southern Montana. Just a few isolated storms will move over the Hi-Line. Thunderstorms will produce a drenching rain with some areas possibly getting more than an inch. Rain will fall around many of the state's wildfires. Highs will be in the 60s and 70s on Thursday. The slow moving area of low pressure will keep some clouds and scattered showers/thunderstorms on Friday. Highs will be in the 70s to around 80. The area of disturbed weather will move out in time for Labor Day Weekend. An isolated thunderstorm is possible on Saturday but most areas will be partly cloudy with highs in the 70s and 80s. Sunday will be mostly sunny with an isolated thunderstorm, highs again will be in the 70s and 80s. Labor Day on Monday will be another pleasant day with just a slight, slight chance of a thunderstorm and highs in the 80s.
Have a great day,
Curtis Grevenitz
Chief Meteorologist
