Wet weather temporarily closes Sun Highway, but also sets off blooms

Hungry Horse News

Thunder rolled. Roads were closed. Downpours fell and flowers, wow. The flowers are looking like they're going to be fantastic this year.

The weather brought snow to Glacier's high country on Tuesday, closing the road at the Loop to the Jackson Glacier Overlook on the east side.

There was about six inches of snow on the highway Tuesday morning and plows actually tried to make some headway but it was snowing so hard they turned around, said Park spokeswoman Melissa Wilson. The Park will reopen the highway as soon as the weather clears.

But all of this wet weather has brought us back to a normal precipitation year - at least in West Glacier and many of Glacier's prairies were coming up blooming with mats of wildflowers.

From October of last year up until now, the West Glacier area is .09 inches above average as of Monday.

"We're about as average as you can get," said Dennis Divoky, a fire specialist with the Park.

That's actually saying a lot, considering the winter snowpack reached record low levels prior to this soggy spring. Things took a dramatic turn after the Memorial day weekend in Glacier.

The month of May in West Glacier saw 2.06 inches of rain.

But since June 1, West Glacier has seen 2.71 inches of rain as of Monday morning, and more is expected through the week.

More than a half-inch of that came rolling in Sunday night in the form of a thunderstorm. Lightning reportedly struck a house on Seville Lane in Coram, though no one was injured. Last week, ice, snow and rock slides closed the Going-to-the-Sun Road on Thursday, but the road reopened Friday afternoon before closing it again Tuesday.

Higher regions of the park saw even more rain. The SNOTEL site at West Flattop Mountain recorded 4.7 inches of rain since June 1 and the SNOTEL site in Many Glacier recorded 4.3 inches of rain.

A SNOTEL site is a remote weather recording station.

While creeks and streams in the northern Flathead are fairly normal for this time of year, heavy rains wreaked havoc south of here, closing Highway 35 between Bigfork and Polson because of a mud slide across the road. Slides and bridge washouts were also stranding folks in several areas of Lake County.

Highway 35 reopened Monday morning, but it will take weeks to completely fix it and motorists can expect delays and other temporary closures of the road.

For up to the minute road conditions in Glacier, call 888-7800 or go to its Web site at http://www.nps.gov/glac/home.htm.