Montana, Dakotas Rocked by Hurricane-Force Wind Gusts

Storms hit like a hurricane literally in Montana as well as North and South Dakota as severe weather rolled through this past weekend with wind speeds up to 94 mph reported.

I found numerous severe storm reports on the storm reports page at NOAA's Storm Prediction Center website. Storms first formed in Montana and then moved into the Dakotas. The first reports were of hail in Montana. The largest report of hail I could find was from near Petrolia Lake in Central Montana, for 3.5 inch hail which lasted for about 15 minutes. That's almost as large as a softball.

Once the severe storms had become stronger, the high wind reports started coming in. Of course hurricane force wind gusts are a much different thing than an actual hurricane with sustained winds at those speeds, but a lot of damage can be done with wind gusts of that magnitude. Near Miles City an 81 mph wind gust was reported as storms worked their way to the east. North Dakota had a wind gust of 91 mph near Hettinger a couple of hours after the one in Miles City and Harding County in South Dakota had a wind gust reach 84 mph.

It also appears that a small tornado touched down in Montana for a short time early in the storm development. That report came in from about 11 miles NW of Roundup, Montana. I also saw a separate tornado report in this article from KTVQ.com of a confirmed tornado 20 miles north of Roundup. There were a few storm chasers in the area capturing what they saw as well.

The northern plains could see severe storms this week as a system is forecast to move from that area into the Midwest. We'll have to wait and see if those storms pack the hurricane-force kind of punch the ones over the weekend had.