One year ago today the Woods Creek Fire in the Big Belt Mountains made an aggressive move down from Boulder Mountain toward White Sulphur Springs. The blaze traveled several miles in only a few hours. Fire season 2021 was very different than this year's fire season. While there is no where near the activity this year, there still is a lot of fire season left. Climatologically we are in the hottest time of year with the start of August only a week away. While the next few days will be comfortable with light wind and no real thunderstorm activity, heat will be building for the final weekend of July and thunderstorms will return with more lightning strikes. A few showers and thunderstorms will move across north-central and central Montana overnight into Tuesday morning. Those storms will clear quickly and most of Tuesday will be beautiful with mostly sunny skies and highs in the 70s and 80s. There will be a pleasant north breeze up to 10-15mph. Wednesday will be similar with high pressure still in control. It will be mostly sunny with highs in the 80s. Thursday will start heating up with highs in the 80s to low 90s. Some monsoon moisture from the south will increase mainly west of the Continental Divide resulting in some thunderstorms over there. Some of that thunderstorm activity will spread east on Friday with scattered boomers making their way into central Montana by evening. Highs will be warmer in the 90s for most areas. The final weekend of July will be hot with highs in the 90s to around 100. There should be a few isolated storms on Saturday, with more scattered storms on Sunday. Monday could be a very high fire danger day with highs near 90, low humidity, and strong west wind. Some good news though, by that time Montana will be close to seeing average temperatures start to drop with the hottest time of year coming to an end.
Curtis Grevenitz
Chief Meteorologist
