Montana has numerous hazards. Camping, fishing, hunting and hiking often is complicated by Grizzly bears, cougars and wolves. We get incredible windstorms, hard rains and whiteout blizzards.
But this current weather is, in my opinion, the worst Montana has to offer. Right now, it's 92 degrees warmer inside my house than it is outside. People from more southern areas often tease me because my 69-72 degree inside temp is colder than they see outside in their area. Subzero cold is completely foreign to them and really, beyond their understanding.
Subzero cold is bad enough but the super cold (what I call anything under -20F) is a real issue. Metal becomes brittle. Pretty much anything that is on the verge of breaking will break. Oil in your car freezes and doesn't flow properly, causing engine damage. If your battery is low, it'll probably be killed by these temps. Water lines in your house freeze and break. Windows can crack or break. If you left an unopened can of pop in your car, you'll find it has exploded and you've got some clean-up to do.
Here's one that even Montanans may not be aware of. At 45 below, propane can gel, causing your furnace to go out. So, here it is 45 below zero and your furnace quits working! I've experienced this in my youth in West Yellowstone. We kept a light bulb burning inside the cover of our propane tank to keep the regulator warm. You'd see that all over town, little lights shining in all the back yards.
What would normally be a minor inconvenience can become deadly. Get your car stuck in the snow? Better be prepared to stay warm until help gets there. If you slide off the road, hope you had the good sense to dress as if you were on an arctic excursion when you went out for dinner because if you don't have cold weather gear, that simple slide off can be the end for you. And there won't be much traffic to find you because most of us like to just stay inside during these periods.
In the Jack London story: "To build a Fire", the character spits his tobacco juice and can hear it crackle as it freezes on the way to the ground. When I was walking to school one time, in West Yellowstone, MT, I tried that. I spat and I could hear it snap when it hit the snow. Icicles formed on my eyelashes. Nowadays, icicles form on my mustache as well.
Even with no wind movement, your skin can freeze (frost bite) in just a few minutes. Windchill, the way the wind makes your skin colder, can change that to a much shorter time. Bare skin is a bad thing in our world during these "cold snaps".
And those of use who live here just go on with our lives without any real concern. We're prepared. Our vehicles have extra blankets, food and other supplies to keep us safe if something happens. We dress for the weather. Farmers are out feeding their cows. It's calving season now, or beginning for some, so they are out all night, making sure the calves are born safely and are kept warm. Water has to be kept flowing for the livestock. Livestock seeks shelter in coulees and timbered areas. We often bring newborn calves in to warming sheds or barns until their mamas get them fed up and warmed inside so they can withstand the outside temps.
We have electric engine heaters installed in all our vehicles to heat the coolant and/or oil when the engine isn't running. When you find outlets at Montana business parking lots, it's not to charge your EV. It's to plug in your engine heater. We let our water trickle in the sink over night. We have "heat tape" wrapped around our water lines in order to keep them from freezing. This isn't new to a lot of us but I have to admit it isn't as fun or unimportant as it was when I was younger. I'm glad I'm retired so I don't have to drive in it.
During the Alaska gold rush, you were a cheechako (tenderfoot) for the first year you were there but those who had lived through one or more winters were called a "Sourdough". I've always been kind of proud to be a West Yellowstone Sourdough as "West" can be one of the coldest places, not only in Montana but in the entire "lower 48" of the U.S.
This weekend, probably tonight, we should reach the coldest temperature I've experienced here in Townsend, MT. The forecast is for us to reach -35f as a low temp tonight. The coldest I've ever personally experienced was -52 in West Yellowstone and that same winter, we never got above zero from late December until late February there.
It's during these periods that I think about becoming what we call a "Snowbird" and buying a winter place in Arizona. But, there's something about these cold snaps. The feel and the smell of the super cold air. That feel of a "lazy wind" (too lazy to go around you so it goes through). The squeak of the snow under foot. That feeling as you go from 25 below into a house that's almost 100 degrees warmer. Just knowing how to live like this, to keep vehicles and people healthy. To care for animals. Robert Service caught it in his poem "The Spell of the Yukon". I just substitute "Montana" for "the Yukon". Although it would be easier to be living somewhere that snow and weather that even approached freezing, I wouldn't like it. I'm third generation in West Yellowstone and I always joke that I moved north to a better climate. I'm a Montana boy and that's the way I will stay.
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