Montana Weather Hits Record Heat After Snow

Temperatures are expected to soar again tomorrow, just a week after the biggest storm of the winter hit the region.

Highs were already topping 70 in some locations yesterday. And on Thursday, records started to fall, many dating all the way back to 1910.

NWS Missoula reported Missoula had already hit a high of 71 degrees by late afternoon, with Butte hitting 68. Both of those were high enough to eclipse the old records.

East of the Divide, Helena, Bozeman, and Dillon were all breaking records with temperatures in the mid-70s. Havre did the same, topping out at 75. Billings crested at 79, and Miles City had hit 80 by late afternoon.

      😎 And it will be even warmer on Friday.

National Weather Service forecasters in Billings expect Montana's largest city to hit 86 on Friday.

For the HiLine, the Rocky Mountain Front, and Central Montana, winds will be very gusty again, hitting around 55 miles per hour, and perhaps as high as 80 to 90 mph on the Front.

Fire danger already

Forecasters are also warning of increased fire danger on Friday, especially in Southeast Montana.

Montana DNRC says firefighters now have 25-percent containment on the Panama Fire, which started Wednesday in the rough country north of I-90 and east of Whitehall on Cardwell Hill. The blaze has burned about 600 acres. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office reports firefighters were able to protect a structure in the burn area.

The Hayden Fire near Sheridan had burned 75 acres. The Pumpkin Fire, south of Miles City, had burned over 1-hundred acres, while the Bluffport Fire west of Fallon had burned 93 acres.

Glacier Falls Short of Visitor Record

Glacier National Park reports that 2025 was a solid, but not record-breaking, year for park visitors. That confirmed the numbers we reported earlier this year. 

The end-of-the-year total was 3.1 million visitors, which puts 2025 on the list of the top five busiest years in Glacier. But that's short of the record and below 2024. It's thought some of the impact comes from the long government shutdown that limited park operations last year, but also a drop in international visitors, especially from Canada.

Yellowstone National Park still drew more than 4.7 million people through the gate last year, about 20,000 more visitors than in the previous year.

READ MORE: Where's Montana's Parks Rank for Popularity

Friday is the deadline for property tax help

Friday is the deadline for Montana property owners to file for those "homestead" property tax rebates from the state. Applications and information are available at homestead-dot-mt-gov.

Missoula Police "grapple" to catch a bad guy

A dramatic chase in Missoula on Wednesday was likely one of the first times we've seen the new "Grappler" device used to end a Montana pursuit.

Missoula Police used the device to catch a "high-risk individual" who was armed and wanted on a Ravalli County warrant, working with the FBI Montana Regional Violent Crime Task Force.

They say the suspect was traveling through heavy traffic in downtown, so officers used the device, which employees a net and high tensile cable to "snag" a suspect's car and bring it safely to a stop on the Beartracks Bridge.

    🚨 Grapplers are becoming a popular option for stopping chases and are already being used by law enforcement in other parts of the Northwest.

Rocky Boy stabbing case

Prosecutors have secured a guilty plea against an Eastern Montana man accused of a fatal stabbing on one of our reservations. Traci Taylor has details: