Paula Brady captured this picture of her yard at her home in Havre on Monday where as much as 15 inches of snow fell.
© Paula BradyPaula Brady captured this picture of her yard at her home in Havre on Monday where as much as 15 inches of snow fell.
While the mountains in western Montana received a dusting of snow early this week, Havre Montana was pounded by what appears to be a record snowstorm. Meteorologist Paul Nutter from the National Weather Service in Great Falls explains.

"Snow accumulations in Havre have seen widespread reports of a foot, maybe as much as 15 inches in the Havre area," Nutter said. "Potentially, what is more significant is that snow stuck to all the leaf covered trees and the result has been broken limbs and power outages. Our understanding is that power is out for all of Havre... as far as we know."

Nutter said the snowfall increased dramatically on Monday and began to dissipate by around 10 a.m. Tuesday, October 3. Up to this point, the record snowfall for the Havre area at this time of year was between five and eight inches.



"We are still compiling our numbers and we're not going to call this number official yet, but if we do end up with a, approximately 14 inch snow total, we will easily set a daily snow record Havre it will definitely an extreme event for this early in the season and for this time of year. It's definitely going to stand out."

Nutter said the snow made driving extremely difficult in Hill County and parts of Blaine County. Big cities on the perimeter of the storm like Helena and Great Falls only received a few inches of snow.