Get ready for a white Christmas

It may have been a little late to the party, but winter is here to stay.

Forecasters are calling for continued cold temperatures and plenty more snow for Christmas week.

“We are looking at a Christmas Eve to Christmas Day storm,” said Jeff Kitsmiller, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Missoula.

Kitsmiller said the main focus of the storm will be North Central Idaho and West Central Montana, but that the Flathead should expect to see heavy snow at higher elevations and some accumulation in the valley.

“I don’t think anyone is going to get missed,” he said.

The service has issued a Hazardous Weather Outlook for mountainous areas and is expected to issue a winter storm watch by Wednesday.

Initially, weather service models had predicted a warming trend to accompany the next round of precipitation that would bring temperatures back in line with normal for this time of year, but Kitsmiller said that’s looking less and less likely to happen.

“Each run is showing temperatures will moderate just a little,” he said.

Normal temperatures for this week would be a high of 29 degrees and a low of 15. “We’ve been at least 15 degrees off that,” Kitsmiller said of the past two weeks.

The coldest temperatures in the area have been from Many Glacier, on the east side of Glacier National Park, where the mercury dipped to 31 below at midnight Dec. 16.

Polebridge was 28 below Dec. 20, West Glacier 22 below on Dec. 21 and Glacier Park International Airport even saw 22 below Dec. 20, making for a frigid night as skies cleared.