January reigns as Glacier's wettest month

The Daily Inter Lake

January turned out to be the wettest month on record for Glacier National Park, and it also turned in record high temperatures.

Dating back to 1950, January was the wettest month recorded at West Glacier, with a whopping 7.66 inches of total precipitation.

But it was also the warmest January on record, with an average temperature for the month of 32.7 degrees.

West Glacier reached a maximum of 41 degrees on Jan. 31, while the minimum temperature recorded for the month was 20 degrees on Jan. 26.

Total snowfall for the month was 34.4 inches at West Glacier, surpassing the 22.2 inches in January 2005 by more than a foot.

Despite the warmer weather, the park has retained snow on the ground even at West Glacier, with 21 inches at the end of the month.

There has been dramatically more snow, along with lower temperatures, at higher elevations.

On Tuesday, the Flattop Mountain snow-measurement site showed a snowpack of 127 inches and 37 inches of snow water equivalent (the amount of water in that snow). Those numbers represent a huge gain over the Jan. 1 measurements of 13.8 inches of snow water equivalent and 52.3 inches of snow.

The previous record for January temperatures was in 1953, with an average of 32 degrees for the month. That year was also the second-wettest January recorded. The park's coldest January on record was in 1979 with an average temperature of 3.6 degrees.