Winter Storm

Summer Snow Mixed Blessing For Wildfire Relief

It's not often you hear of a snowstorm falling on top of a raging wildfire, but that's exactly what happened Friday in Idaho.

National Weather Service Incident Meteorologist Ryan Walbrun shared with us photos of the blanket of snow near the Elevenmile Fire burning in central Idaho.

Idaho wildfire seeing snow on Sep. 4, 2015. — Location of the Elevenmile Fire in central Idaho (white circle), where snow fell on September 4, 2015. Almost four dozen other large fires were still burning in the West, as of September 4.

Walbrun said 1-3 inches of snow blanketed an area in the Salmon-Challis National Forest Friday, where a forest fire has been burning since August 24. As of Saturday morning, the Elevenmile fire was only 20 percent contained and had charred 10,387 acres in a remote area west of Challis, Idaho. Containment isn't expected until mid-October.

The snowstorm was a mixed blessing for firefighters battling the blaze, reports Inciweb. While the storm helped to temporarily halt the fire's spread, snowy road conditions prevented access to the fire and no fireline construction was completed after the storm.

Winter weather advisories were issued by the National Weather Service for elevations above 6500 feet in western Montana and central Idaho, where up to 4 inches of snow was expected through early Sunday.

The snowstorm was a mixed blessing for firefighters working the Elevenmile Fire.
(Inciweb)

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This included Glacier National Park, where wildfires have flared up this summer.

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Cooler, wetter weather had finally shifted into the drought-plagued Northwest after one of the hottest summers on record.

Cut Bank, Montana, east of Glacier National Park, set a record cold daily high temperature Friday, only climbing to 48 degrees.

Daily record low temperatures were set in Baker, Oregon (27), Pendleton, Oregon (39), and tied in Walla Walla, Washington (44) Friday.

A welcomed 0.84 inches of rain fell in Stanley, Idaho, their heaviest precipitation event since February 6-7.

Snow blankets the Elevenmile Fire in central Idaho's Salmon-Challis National Forest on Sep. 4, 2015. (Ryan Walbrun) — Snow blankets the area near the Elevenmile Fire in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, Idaho, on September 4, 2015.
(Ryan Walbrun)

Incident meteorologists, or IMETs, are specifically-trained NWS meteorologists deployed to active wildfires to provide forecast support to fire crews. As of mid-August, a record number of IMETs had been sent to the field, due to the rash of western wildfires.

Over 8.4 million acres have been charred by wildfires in the U.S. so far in 2015, roughly 2.7 million acres more than the most recent 10-year average-to-date, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Over 5.1 million of those acres have been in Alaska.