Fall starts with heat

Welcome to fall. Or is it summer still?

While Sept. 1 always marks the start of the meteorological fall, a hot and relatively dry summer in Havre and on the Hi-Line will continue to march on, at least for the next 10-14 days.

According to the National Weather Service in Great Falls, Havre is excepted to see high temperatures in the 90s for the next week, and possibly set records along the way.

Havre hit 98 degrees at 2:31 p.m. Thursday, one degree short of the record 99 degrees set in 1983.

At 7 this morning, the forecast high for Havre today was 93 degrees, while Saturday is slated to reach 102 degrees, which would break the record for Sept. 3. The Labor Day weekend overall is expected to sizzle with a high of 96 on Sunday and a high of 94 predicted for Labor Day, close to the record for the hottest Sept. 5 in Havre’s history if reached. The Weather Channel’s 15-day outlook has the heat continuing through next Wednesday, with a predicted high of 98 on that day, before a cool down is expected.

For Sept. 8-14, the Weather Channel is showing temperatures in the mid- to low-70s for Havre, which are near normal for that stretch of the month. However, little to no precipitation is in the forecast for the next 15 days, which means a parched Havre, Hill County and Hi-Line will continue as July and August’s dry weather carry into September.

Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — NOAA — just released its fall outlook, with Havre, and all of Montana to trend above average for temperatures and near or slightly below average for precipitation for the months of September and October. Havre’s average daily high for September is 72, with a low of 42, and an average of four days of rain. Havre’s averages for October are a high of 58, a low of 31 and three days of rain and one day of snow per year.

And eventually, snow could be in the forecast. According to NOAA, November will trend colder as La Niña conditions are slated to persist for the third straight year. The rare “triple dip” La Niña, as it’s known, has only occurred two other times in the last 100 years, and in each of those, the third winter has been the strongest. And NOAA is forecasting Havre, and much of Montana, with a better than 60 percent chance of below average temperatures for November, as well as an equal chance of above or below normal precipitation for the final month of fall.

NOAA also announced that while the strong La Niña conditions will last through Christmas, the cycle is finally expected to end in early January, with no signs of an El Niño coming in 2023, and Havre’s winter months of January and February are currently forecast to be near normal temperatures and near normal precipitation as is typically the case during a neutral winter.

First things first, however, and that’s the heat. The current heatwave is slated to last through next week. Already, since June 1, Havre has had eight days where the temperature has reached 100 degrees, and the area is approaching 30 days of 90-plus degree temperatures.