Montana
Real-Time Updates: Severe weather slams Western Montana Wednesday, Dec. 17
(Update 11:00 a.m.)
- All lanes closed on US-93 near Evaro due to fallen trees.
- All lanes closed on MT-200 east of Bonner due to fallen trees.
(Update 10:40 a.m.) The Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office has issued an emergency wind and travel warning for the Bitterroot.
The warning states that “due to extreme winds, which are causing trees to fall into roadways and taking down power lines, as well as creating very dangerous driving conditions, the RCSO is advising that people not travel until the wind event decreases.”
High-profile vehicles should not travel in Ravalli County at this time.
Ravalli County 911 is also currently being overwhelmed with calls. Residents are asked to only report immediate emergencies to 911.
The Ravalli County Emergency Operations Center is open. To report non-emergent storm-related events in the Bitterroot, you’re asked to call the EOC at 406-375-6650.
(Update 10:15 a.m.) The reports of damage around Western Montana are rolling in Wednesday morning as thousands remain without power, especially in the northwestern corner.
As trees topple across the area, officials are urging travelers to use caution.
Trees have blocked access to several roads in the region. Here’s the road report as of 10 a.m.:
- MT-35 is CLOSED from milepost 2.8 to 6
- Southbound lanes are blocked on US-93 north of Somers due to a semi blow over
- Tree down and blocking southbound lanes on US-93 near Ronan
- Tree blocking all lanes on MT-35 east of Polson.
- Power lines down blocking on lanes on US-2 west of Marion.
- Severe driving conditions on US-12 from Lolo to Lolo Pass due to downed trees
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office issued a notice at 9:40 a.m. that the county is under emergency travel only.
To the south, the Missoula Police Department requested necessary travel only in the city.
The Frenchtown Rural Fire District put out a public service announcement asking people to stay home and off the roads.
Power outages are still impacting several areas of Western Montana too.
NorthWestern Energy’s outage map at 10:10 a.m. showed hundreds of customers were in the dark in Missoula, Mineral, and Sanders counties. Flathead Electric shows thousands of people without power in Flathead and Lincoln counties.
Traffic signals are out in the City of Kalispell. All intersections with dark stoplights must be treated as a 4-way stop.
- Come to a complete stop
- Take turns — first to stop goes first
- Yield to pedestrians
- Proceed slowly and cautiously
Kalispell’s popular Woodland Park is closed due to heavy winds and hazardous conditions.
The weather has closed the following schools for Wednesday (this list will be updated):
- Clinton
- Frenchtown
- Libby
- Marion
- Noxon
- Pleasant Valley
- St. Regis
- Superior
- Troy
- West Glacier
High winds tore off the roof of Jefferson School in Missoula. The school is not currently serving students.
Micah Hill / MCPS Superintendent
This article will be updated throughout the day. Please follow KPAX’s Facebook page for the latest information too.
(Update 9:45 a.m.)
- MT-35 is CLOSED from milepost 2.8 to 6.
- Southbound lanes are blocked on US-93 north of Somers due to a semi blow over.
(Update 9:15 a.m.) Montana Department of Transportation reporting several new incidents.
- Tree down and blocking southbound lanes on US-93 near Ronan
- Tree blocking all lanes on MT-35 east of Polson.
- Power lines down blocking on lanes on US-2 west of Marion.
- Severe driving conditions on US-12 from Lolo to Lolo Pass due to downed trees.
(Update 9:08 a.m.) Hazardous conditions are wreaking havoc across the City of Missoula causing the Missoula Police Department to ask the community to only travel if absolutely necessary.
In a press release at 9:10 a.m., MPD stated that high winds have created dangerous conditions, including reduced vehicle control, blowing debris, and the potential for downed trees and power lines.
If you cannot avoid traveling right now, you’re asked to:
- Reduce speed
- Be alert for debris in roadways
- Watch for downed trees, power lines, and damaged traffic signals
- Avoid parking near trees or unstable structures
Do not touch anything, including a tree, that may be in contact with power lines. If you see a downed power line, you’re asked to call NorthWestern Energy at 888-467-2669.
For emergencies, call 911. For non-emergency assistance, contact the Missoula Police Department at 406-552-6300.
(Update 9:03 a.m.) A MEANS alert for Missoula County for drivers to be cautious driving due to high winds, several hazards and extreme conditions.
(UPDATE 8:55 a.m.)
Frenchtown School District has cancelled school. Parents should pick up their student from the school to ensure they are supervised and safe as they transition back home. If parents are unable to pick students up, buses will run at 10:00 to return students home. Phones are also out at the South Campus.
(UPDATE: 8:28 a.m.) The storm is hitting Sanders County hard.
Just after 8 a.m., the Community Ambulance Service of W. Sanders Co. posted that power is out in parts of the area and that strong winds are creating extremely dangerous conditions.
Live power lines are across roads, there are reports of falling trees and debris, and some travel routes have become impassable.
Officials are telling people to not travel unless it’s absolutely necessary. School in Noxon has been canceled.
Meanwhile in Mineral County, St. Regis Schools and the Superior School District have also canceled classes.
Due to fallen power lines, Superior Schools will not send the buses back out.
School officials are asking families to pick up their students Wednesday morning. If you’re unable to do so, you’re asked to call Logan Labbe 406-822-2285 to make accommodations.
(1st Report – 8:20 a.m.) The strong Pacific cold front that is moving through Washington has now arrived in Western Montana Wednesday morning.
Power outages have already been reported all across Western Montana including the Interstate 90 corridor from Lookout Pass to Alberton and in Northwest Montana, thousands of residents are without power in the Libby and surrounding areas. For updates on outages check Northwestern Energy Outage map and Flathead Electric Co-Op outage viewers.
Northwestern Energy
There is also reports of road hazards. According to the Montana Department of Transportation a powerline is down on Highway 56 near Noxon. Several trees are also down across Highway 56 between Troy and Noxon.
Interstate 90 westbound lanes at mm 15, west of Superior, are blocked due to downed trees.
MDT
Click here for live map of road closures.
Stay with KPAX for updates on this storm throughout the day.
Montana
Montana Lottery Mega Millions, Big Sky Bonus results for May 8, 2026
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Montana
“It’s Life Alert or rent”: Montana trailer park tenants are on rent strike
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
Montana
Montana’s fastest man who started as a walk on
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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