A sort of super winter storm is ruling parts of Montana in the US and southern Alberta and BC in Canada since Saturday. An exceptional combination of a lot of moisture, huge temperature differences and a storm that’s getting stronger resulted in historical images for September.
A lot of snow has already fallen at high altitudes, locally even resulting in a power failure. Amazing reports are coming in from Glacier National Park and from the Canadian ski resort Castle Mountain Resort.
The exceptionally large amounts of snow are the result of very cold polar air that entered North America in the west at the beginning of last weekend. At an altitude of around 1350 meters above sea level, it was on average 15 degrees colder than normal. Earlier we published this article about that. A storm like this is not unusual for the region, but it is exceptional that something like this happens already in September. You’d expect it more to happen in November or December.
The low temperatures and heavy snowfall in the northwest and west of the US and Canada contrasts enormously with the rest of the northern hemisphere at the moment. It is currently almost 1 degree celcius too warm for the time of the year in large parts of the northern hemisphere and we are still at + 0.3 on a global level. So it is mainly a local phenomenon that we see happening in the USA and Canada right now. Although some snow is expected in the higher parts of the Alps next week, this is unrelated to the snowfall that we are currently seeing in Montana and Canada.
Interesting read: