blackfoot-valley

The next rainiest month is September, averaging a bit over an inch. Between those months, July and August are the driest and sunniest period of the year, each month averaging well under an inch of rain. Much of what does fall “midsummer” typically comes in the form of intense, but spotty, thunderstorms of short duration. In rare years, snow can fall even during the warm season. Such an unusual snowfall came during the early morning hours of June 4, 2001, with several inches of heavy wet snow. (Missoula got snow of 4 inches in depth that morning, whose clinging weight caused widespread damage to the fully foliage-covered trees. Seely Lake, just miles from Ranch headquarters as the crow flies, reported 10 inches. Incredibly, this was only 2 days after Missoula was having ninety degree weather! That freak snow was virtually gone be- fore the day was out.) If the area’s long-term average precipitation were a bit greater, say 20 inches or more yearly, the Nevada Valley’s natural cover would be forest. If it were even a little less, the natural grass cover would be more sparse and able to support correspondingly fewer animals per square mile, as is the case in much of the Great Plains east of the Rockies. Basically, the natural vegetation cover of any region is determined by the climate. The valley’s summers are warm, but not hot by most U.S. standards. The most striking aspect of seasonal temperatures is the contrast typical of interior continental areas in the upper mid-latitudes. Ovando, the only weather station in the area where official long-term records have been kept, shows an average daily temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit for July and 15 degrees for January, the warmest and coldest months. (Note that such figures are derived by averaging the high and low for each day of the month over a long period.) Ovando’s record shows that the station’s average daily temperature range for July as 47-77 degrees, while for January it’s 5-25 de- grees. This means that in July one can typically expect brisk early mornings in the 40s to 50s, and afternoon highs in the 70s to 80s ( 90s are not usual and 100s are virtually unheard of). In January, the lows are commonly in the single digits either plus or minus Fahrenheit, with the highs typically in the 20s or 30s. Temperatures on the Ranch would hardly be much different. As for the extreme: while official record low temperatures for Ovando are not available in U.S. Weather Service publications, residents of Helmville reported -50 degrees Fahrenheit during the exceptionally cold winter of 1996- 97. Tom Geary told this writer that the coldest he remembers was -55,“which 37