BILLINGS — Light snow, fog and rain moved into the Billings area Wednesday afternoon. So far, most of the snow has been flurries, but we are expecting more moving in later in the weekend.
In the early afternoon, the temperature in Billings was 33 degrees, and the wind was out of the northeast at 3 mph.
Around the rest of the state, the temps are mostly into the 30s in eastern Montana, 40s and 50s in western Montana and 25 degrees over Cut Bank.
The threat board is really starting to fill up across Montana. We have Winter Weather Advisories, Winter Storm Watches, and a Winter Storm Warnings across several places.
You can see various amounts of snow expected over the next two days. In Billings, we are expecting 2 to 5 inches.
The Doppler radar shows scattered light rain and snow showers across south-central Montana with most of the snow in the higher elevations.
The high-resolution forecast model shows most of the scattered rain and snow showers continue across much of southern Montana Wednesday afternoon, and then a little more snow moves into the Billings area overnight into Thursday morning.
By Thursday afternoon, we are expecting generally dry conditions in Billings as most of the big storm continues to make its way into the Dakotas.
Then by Friday, British Columbia can just see the next big snow event forming in northwestern Montana. This will be our Saturday storm, the one that will get us about 5 to 6 inches of snow.
In a meantime, the computer models are saying that we will probably get anywhere from 1 to 4 inches of snow over the next two days and then very little accumulation on Thursday and Friday.
However, on Friday night into Saturday morning, that's when the next big storm moves in and starts dumping all the heavy snow.
It will be 35 degrees at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, then we'll see the temperatures roll all way back down to 23 degrees in the morning and stay there through 12:30 p.m.
We will top out at 27 on Thursday then roll back to 15, for the high on Sunday and up to 30 degrees when Tuesday gets here.
BILLINGS FORECAST
TONIGHT: Mostly cloudy with a 90% chance of rain and snow in the early evening, then snow expected overnight with accumulations of around 2 inches. North winds 5 to 15 mph low 21 degrees.
THURSDAY: Mostly cloudy with an 80% chance for snow in the morning, then snow in the afternoon and colder. Additional snow accumulations of an inch or less. North winds 10 to 20 mph. High 27 degrees.
FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy with a 20% chance for snow in the afternoon. East winds 5 to 10 mph. High 25 degrees.
