Wait 5 Minutes

If you don’t like the weather in Ol’ Montana wait 5 minutes. This old saying around these parts holds true as long as my memory serves me. One minute it can be 100 degrees, the next the wind and the hail can come and the thermometer reads 50.

Winter in Montana

You can have a bright sunshiny day in the middle of the winter and a North wind will start blowing and the temperature can drop from a balmy 20 above to 10 below or worse. All of this can be accompanied with blowing snow and blizzard conditions. Then the Wind Chill, what should I say about that. When I was a kid no one knew anything about Wind Chill except my Dad would say , “That’s a damn cold wind.” No kidding Doris it was. You just had brains enough to bundle up when you walked to school. I didn’t walk 5 miles to school when I was young like my folks and others, but I sure didn’t get a ride the 5 or 6 blocks I walked. You had sense enough if the wind was blowing in your face to turn around, duh…

My Beautiful Mother had sense to have her coat on

Ready for Winter

Another wonderful feature of Northern Montana in the middle of the winter is the phenomenon known as the “Chinook”, more precisely it is the “Chinook Wind”, which is a warm southwesterly wind. The word Chinook means “Snow Eater” in the Indian language. This is just what it does. You can have 6 to 8 inches of snow and it can be below zero and the Chinook wind comes and it’s above freezing with the snow melting away.

You gotta love this country. You gotta love it. They say variety is the spice of life, here it is. They say there isn’t really 4 seasons in Montana there is only Winter and Road Construction. I don’t care, I love her.