BILLINGS — It's Friday afternoon in the Big Sky on a shortened work week, and there's plenty of sunshine. The temperatures are little chilly, but not too bad: it's 37 degrees in the early afternoon in Billings.
It was a very chilly morning in the southwest. Both Butte and Dillon did go below zero, while everyone else was in a single digits, teens and even a few low 20s.
But since then, everybody's warmed up to the other side of zero and there are a lot of 20s and 30s around the state at 2 p.m.
The big story is showing up on the Doppler radar and satellite imagery. You can see snow showers between Missoula and Kalispell start making their way into the mountains.
The high-resolution forecast model bears that out as well. It shows those snow showers will continue to march their way toward Great Falls and Bozeman, by later Friday night.
Saturday morning, another huge storm that's moving into the central plains continues clip the southeast corner of Montana as it moves out of the central plains and into the Dakotas.
Billings might see a minor impulse of snow pass through south-central Montana late Saturday afternoon and then totally out of the region by Saturday night.
On Sunday, another wave of snow will track across western Montana and eventually move into Billings, late Sunday night.
Our temperatures will cool from the 30s into the 20s overnight them back into the mid-30s over the weekend and eventually into the mid-40s by the middle part of next week, or should I say, early next year.
BILLINGS FORECAST
TONIGHT: Increasing clouds and still cool. West winds 5 to 15 mph. Low 22 degrees.
SATURDAY: Mostly cloudy with a 20% chance for snow in the morning. Northwest winds 5 to 15 mph. High 36 degrees.
SUNDAY: Mostly sunny with a 20% chance for snow in the afternoon. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. High 34 degrees.
