BILLINGS- It’s Monday in the Big Sky, and Billings, like the rest of the country, is getting ready for a heatwave. This one gets underway Monday afternoon across most of Eastern Montana.
At 1:30 p.m., Billings was at 83 degrees. By 2 p.m., it had already jumped to 86 degrees.
Around the rest of the state, temps were only in the 70s in the west. Once you get past the mountains, just about everybody east of the Divide was already in the 80s looking for 90s.
The thunderstorm outlook for Monday does show a threat of isolated thunderstorms across most of western Montana, and the threat extends as far east as Billings.
The Doppler radar and satellite imagery shows scattered light rain showers developing out in west-central Montana up to Kalispell.
But where the storms are starting to pop up pretty big is where we have some instability showers developing around Yellowstone Park.
Those are the showers that could actually push into the Billings area later Monday and Tuesday.
The high-resolution forecast model shows we will probably see showers in the foothills of the Beartooth Mountains.
That is where most of the rain is expected to stay throughout the afternoon and through 6 p.m.
Then another batch of rain starts moving in about 9 p.m. Tuesday, with a shortwave weather disturbance that will extend from northern Wyoming up to Canada.
This is where we have our next 20% chance for showers. Temperatures are expected to stay into the upper 80s Monday afternoon but start working their way into the 90s later Monday night and Tuesday.
We will actually get up close to 100 degrees by Wednesday, and the temps roll back to right around 90 degrees the rest of the week and through the weekend.
BILLINGS FORECAST
TONIGHT: Mostly clear in the early evening then becoming mostly cloudy with a slight chance of rain overnight. East winds 5 to 10 mph. Low 64 degrees.
TUESDAY: Mostly sunny and hot. West winds 5 to 10 mph the morning shifting to the southeast in the afternoon. High 95 degrees.
WEDNESDAY: Mostly sunny and extremely hot. West winds 5 to 15 mph. High 97 to 100 degrees.
