BILLINGS — Looking over Billings, toward the Beartooth Mountains, it has its own rugged beauty, doesn't it?
Thursday afternoon, in Billings we have partly cloudy skies and 41 degrees. The wind is out of the southwest at 16 mph, and that gives us a wind chill of 33 degrees.
Around the rest of the state, our current temps are mostly into the 30s and 40s, but Worland, Wyoming, is 28 degrees. Winds on the eastern slopes of the Divide are a little breezy too, gusting anywhere from 36 mph at Livingston up to 60 mph by Cut Bank.
When it comes to wind, we have a High Wind Warning for the Rocky Mountain front, beginning Friday at 5 p.m. and going until Saturday morning at 5 a.m. for winds gusting to 70 mph.
Plus, we have a High Wind Watch on the eastern slopes of the Divide into central Montana for winds gusting 40 to 60 mp. That’s for Friday night through Saturday morning.
A little farther south in Sweet Grass County and the Beartooth foothills, we have a High Wind Watch Friday night through Sunday night for winds gusting 60 to 70 mph.
The Doppler radar shows the next batch of snow moving in west-central Montana around Missoula and Great Falls and another batch of snow in Eastern Idaho heading into the Tetons.
Our high-resolution forecast model shows those snow showers to the west will fall apart as they come down the eastern slopes of the Divide.
The downsloping winds will have a tendency to evaporate the precipitation before making it to the Plains.
That scenario stays with us through Friday night into Saturday. But by Sunday morning, we might just start to see scattered snow showers move into Billings by 8:30 a.m.
It'll be 38 degrees at 5:30 p.m. in Billings. Then we roll the temperature back to 28 degrees in the morning and back up to 37 degrees. by 1:30 p.m. Friday.
We will top out at 40 degrees on Friday and work our way up to 49 or 50 on Sunday, then back to the low 30s by the middle part of next week.
BILLINGS FORECAST
TONIGHT: Decreasing clouds and a little on the cool side. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Low 25 degrees.
FRIDAY: Mostly sunny and continued mild. West winds 5 to 15 mph. High 40 degrees.
SATURDAY: Partly cloudy, breezy and a little bit warmer. Southwest winds 15 to toy 5 mph gusting to 40 mph in the afternoon. High 44 degrees.
