What the winter will bring is still unclear

A second snowstorm hit north-central Montana over the weekend, bringing enough white stuff to tie a National Weather Service record for Havre on Nov. 10 set at 4 inches in 1916 and bringing some slippery driving conditions to the area.

Once again, the winter conditions are not expected to last, with temperatures expected to be in the 20s to 30s, depending on the forecaster, today and back into the 40s or even 50s later in the week.

The forecast calls for mostly sunny skies through the weekends with temperatures expected to drop some by Saturday or Sunday.

The long-range forecast still is up in the air, with The Farmers' Almanac predicting the region including Montana will be piercingly cold with about-normal snowfall, while the Old Farmers' Almanac predicts colder-than-normal winter temperatures here, with lower-than-normal precipitation and snowfall.

AccuWeather.com predicts the winter in this region will see above-normal precipitation and colder-than-normal weather.

Meanwhile, National Weather Service, echoed by the Weather Channel, is not making a specific prediction for the winter.

An update on the conditions in the equatorial Pacific - which can cause El Niño conditions leading toward warm, dry Montana winters or La Niña conditions causing wetter, colder weather here - continues to be neutral, an update from the federal Climate Prediction Center released Thursday said.

That does not mean the area could not see a severe winter - simply that Weather Service cannot make with confidence a prediction about what the winter is likely to bring.