Connect with us

Montana

Really Cold for Parts of Montana

Published

on

Really Cold for Parts of Montana


An arctic boundary continues to meander across the state with much colder temperatures the farther north and east you go. Southwestern Montana has been near normal with below normal temperatures across the Hi-Line and eastern Montana but changes are coming. Looking ahead through the holiday weekend into the beginning of December, the cold airmass will retreat and a warmup is on tap for all of Montana. Besides a little light snow and cloudy skies at times, the weather has been fairly nice considering what it could be at this time of year. There will be some areas of light snow and cold temperatures into the weekend, but changes are heading to Montana and across the West. A ridge of high pressure will be building across the West resulting mild and dry conditions for everyone for the beginning of December. Saturday will be mostly cloudy early with partly cloudy skies later in the afternoon. A couple of mountain snow showers are possible. It will be cold again for northeast Montana with light wind and highs in the 10s, central and western Montana will have highs in the 30s to around 40. Sunday will be partly to mostly cloudy with highs again colder across northeast Montana. A little light snow could clip Sheridan County but most of the state will be dry. A ridge of high pressure will build across the West next week. The storm track will retreat to the north and conditions will be mild and dry for the beginning of December.

Have a great holiday weekend,
Curtis Grevenitz
Chief Meteorologist





Source link

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Montana

Former Montana Grizzly running back Joey Counts dies at age 31

Published

on

Former Montana Grizzly running back Joey Counts dies at age 31


MISSOULA — Former University of Montana running back Joey Counts, best known by Griz fans for his dramatic winning touchdown in a stunning home triumph over North Dakota State nine years ago, has died.

An announcement was made online Friday by his employer, the Gilbert (Arizona) Fire Department. 

“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved Joey Counts, a dedicated officer with the Gilbert Fire Department, who tragically passed away in Chandler, Arizona. Joey’s untimely death leaves an irreplaceable void in the lives of his family, friends, colleagues, and the entire community he served so selflessly. While we mourn his loss, we also celebrate his life, his contributions to the community, and the unwavering dedication he demonstrated throughout his career.”

No cause of death was given.

Advertisement

People are also reading…

Longtime fans of Griz football will likely never forget Counts’ short TD burst with two seconds left in a late August 2015 game against then-four-time defending FCS champion NDSU. Montana upset the top-ranked, Carson-Wentz-led Bison, 38-35, under smoky skies in a game that aired on ESPN.

Advertisement

It was the moment of a lifetime for Counts, who missed all of 2014 with a foot injury and was held of out of much of 2015 fall camp, too.

“I can’t believe it,” said Counts, a locker room favorite for his boisterous attitude, after the game. “There’s a lot of heart and perseverance on this team and it was calm; everybody knew what they had to do.

“We all figured they were gonna pinch down pretty hard. I just saw some light and I took it.”

Counts was on the Montana roster from 2012 to 2016. His employer conveyed Friday what he meant to colleagues and his community in his professional life.

“Joey’s career as a firefighter and officer with the Gilbert Fire Department was defined by his commitment to serving the people of his community. He was not just a firefighter; he was a true hero. Joey ran toward danger when others were running away, and his bravery in the face of adversity was an inspiration to all who knew him. Whether responding to fires, medical emergencies, or other crises, Joey remained calm, focused, and compassionate in his work.”

Advertisement

To read a tribute to Counts by his employer, log on to: memorialeditorial.cfd/death-joey-counts-obituary-chandler-az-gilbert-fire-department-officer-is-dead/

Bill Speltz is Missoulian sports editor. Contact him at bill.speltz@406mtsports.com or on Twitter @billspeltz

Advertisement



Source link

Continue Reading

Montana

What I Learned About Fly-Fishing and Friendship on a Montana River

Published

on

What I Learned About Fly-Fishing and Friendship on a Montana River


“],”filter”:{“nextExceptions”:”img, blockquote, div”,”nextContainsExceptions”:”img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”},”renderIntial”:true,”wordCount”:350}”>

This spring creek was not one of the most eminent Montana spring creeks, not Nelson Spring Creek and not Armstrong, not the sort of place where you could plunk down twenty-five dollars per rod per day for the privilege of casting your fly over large savvy trout along an exclusive and well-manicured section of water. On this creek you fished free or not at all. I fished free, because I knew the two people inside the house and, through them, the wonderful surly old rancher who owned the place.

They lived there themselves, those two, in large part because of the creek. The male half of the partnership was at that time a raving and insatiable fly-fisherman, like me, for whom the luxury of having this particular spring creek just a three-minute stroll from his back door was worth any number of professional and personal sacrifices. He had found a place he loved dearly, and he wanted to stay. During previous incarnations he had been a wire-service reporter in Africa, a bar owner in Chicago, a magazine editor in New York, a reform-school guard in Idaho, and a timber faller in the winter woods of Montana. He had decided to quit the last before he cut off a leg with his chain saw, or worse; he was later kind enough to offer me his saw and his expert coaching and then to dissuade me deftly from making use of either, during the period when I was so desperate and foolhardy as to consider trying to earn a living that way. All we both wanted, really, was to write novels and fly-fish for trout. We fished the spring creek, together and individually, more than a hundred days each year. We memorized that water. The female half of the partnership, on the other hand, was a vegetarian by principle who lived chiefly on grapefruit and considered that anyone who tormented innocent fish—either for food or, worse, for the sport of catching them and then gently releasing them, as we did—showed the most inexcusable symptoms of arrested development and demented adolescent cruelty, but she tolerated us. All she wanted was to write novels and read Jane Austen and ride the hot mare. None of us had any money.

None of us was being published. Nothing happened in that town between October and May. The man and I played chess. We endangered our lives hilariously cutting and hauling firewood. We skied into the backcountry carrying tents and cast-iron skillets and bottles of wine, then argued drunkenly over whether it was proper to litter the woods with eggshells, if the magpies and crows did it too. We watched Willie Stargell win a World Series. Sometimes on cold clear days we put on wool gloves with no fingertips and went out to fish. Meanwhile the woman sequestered herself in a rickety backyard shed, with a small woodstove and a cot and a manual typewriter, surrounded by black widow spiders that she chose to view as pets. Or the three of us stood in their kitchen, until late hours on winter nights, while the woman peeled and ate uncountable grapefruits and the man and I drank whiskey, and we screamed at each other about literature.

Advertisement

The spring creek ran cool in summer. It ran warm in winter. This is what spring creeks do; this is their special felicity. It steamed and it rippled with fluid life when the main river was frozen over solid. Anchor ice never formed on the rocks of its riffles, killing insect larvae where they lived, and frazil ice never made the water slushy—as occurred on the main river. During spring runoff this creek didn’t flood; therefore the bottom wasn’t scoured and disrupted, and the eggs of the rainbow trout, which spawned around that time, weren’t swept out of the nests and buried lethally in silt. The creek did go brown with turbidity during runoff, from the discharge of several small tributaries that carried meltwater out of the mountains through an erosional zone, but the color would clear again soon.

Insects continued hatching on this creek through the coldest months of the winter. In October and November, large brown trout came upstream from the main river and scooped out their spawning nests on a bend that curved around the sheep pasture, just downstream from the car bodies. In August, grasshoppers blundered onto the water from the brushy banks, and fish exploded out of nowhere to take them. Occasionally, I or the other fellow would cast a tiny fly and pull in a grayling, that gorgeous and delicate cousin of trout, an Arctic species left behind by the last glaciation, that fared poorly in the warm summer temperatures of sun-heated meltwater rivers. In this creek a grayling could be comfortable, because most of the water came from deep underground. That water ran cool in summer, relatively, and warm in winter, relatively—relative in each case to the surrounding air temperature, as well as the temperature of the main river. In absolute terms the creek’s temperature tended to be stable year-round, holding steady in a hospitable middle range close to the constant temperature of the groundwater from which it was fed. This is what spring creeks, by definition, do. The scientific jargon for such a balanced condition is stenothermal: temperatures in a narrow range. The ecological result is a stable habitat and a twelve-month growing season. Free from extremes of cold or heat, free from flooding, free from ice and heavy siltation and scouring, the particular spring creek in question seemed always to me a thing of sublime and succoring constancy. In that regard it was no different from other spring creeks, but it was the one I knew and cared about.

The three of us stood in their kitchen, until late hours on winter nights, while the woman peeled and ate uncountable grapefruits and the man and I drank whiskey, and we screamed at each other about literature.

The stretch of years came to an end. The marriage came to an end. There were reasons, but the reasons were private, and are certainly none of our business here. Books were pulled down off shelves and sorted into two piles. Fine oaken furniture, too heavy to be hauled into uncertain futures, was sold off for the price of a sad song. The white-stockinged mare was sold also, to a family with a couple of young barrel racers, and the herd of trap-lame and half-feral cats was divided up. The man and the woman left town individually, in separate trucks, at separate times, each headed back toward New York City. I helped load the second truck, the man’s, but my voice wasn’t functioning well on that occasion. I was afflicted with a charley horse of the throat. It had all been hard to witness, not simply because a marriage had ended but even more so because, in my unsolicited judgment, a great love affair had. This partnership of theirs had been a vivid and imposing thing.

Or maybe it was hard because two love affairs had ended—if you count mine with the pair of them. I should say here that a friendship remains between me and each of them. Friendship with such folk is a lot. But it’s not the same.

Now I live in the city from which college students flock off to the Fourth of July rodeo in that little town, where they raise hell for a day and litter Main Street with beer cans and then sleep it off under the scraggly elm in what is now someone else’s front yard—the compensation being that July Fourth is quieter up here. It is only an hour’s drive. Not too long ago I was down there myself.

Advertisement

I parked, as always, in the yard by the burn barrel outside the stucco house. The house was empty; I avoided it. With my waders and my fly rod I walked out to the spring creek. Of course it was all a mistake.

I stepped into the creek and began fishing my way upstream, casting a grasshopper imitation into patches of shade along the overhung banks. There were a few strikes. There was a fish caught and released. But after less than an hour I quit. I climbed out of the water. I left. I had imagined that a spring creek was a thing of sublime and succoring constancy. I was wrong. Heraclitus was right.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Montana

Options to patrol Alberta-Montana border says Smith

Published

on

Options to patrol Alberta-Montana border says Smith


The Alberta-Montana border. Phot credit: ID 268389478 © Brandon Smith | Dreamstime.com

By The Canadian Press

Advertisement

Alberta

Nov 28, 2024 | 5:51 PM

EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says it’s early days on figuring out how the province will patrol its border with Montana but says there are options, and pointed to existing specialized sheriff units as a model.

Advertisement

Smith’s pledge came after an emergency meeting this week to strategize with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other premiers over threats from incoming U.S. president Donald Trump.

Trump has said he will slap a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican imports on his first day in office in January until the flow of illegal migrants and drugs is stemmed.

Smith is urging the federal government to come up with a better border security plan, but says she’s prepared to pony up provincial resources.



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending