Last week\u2019s atmospheric river dropped over 12 inches of rain across northwest Montana, melting snow and triggering flooding across the region. December rains are more likely as a result of human-caused climate change, says State Climatologist Kelsey Jencso.<\/p>\n
“This is what the future projections and climate modeling portend in terms of changes in our precipitation patterns as well as our temperature patterns.”<\/p>\n
Jencso says Montanans can expect to see more precipitation as a whole, but more of it coming in these bigger rainfall or snow events. These atmospheric rivers are not a new phenomenon, but they are projected to become much more common as greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the planet.<\/p>\n
“When we think about that increase in precipitation, there’s nothing average about it. These events that are occurring are becoming more extreme in nature. These atmospheric rivers are a great example of that.”<\/p>\n
But Jencso explains this recent rainfall will help the drought-stricken region.<\/p>\n
“Some of this precipitation is recharging our soils, our groundwater systems \u2014 which here in western Montana, we\u2019ve desperately needed that. Our last three snowpack years have been pretty dismal.”<\/p>\n
There is more extreme weather hitting this week, including high winds across the state today, and additional precipitation in the forecast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week\u2019s atmospheric river dropped over 12 inches of rain across northwest Montana, melting snow and triggering flooding…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":456241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-456240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115742360773635299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}