© Dave BellWyoming photographer Dave Bell got caught in a blizzard on the Beartooth Highway on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. It left a distinct wintery scene all around the Wyoming high country.
Pinedale photographer Dave Bell was traveling throughout northwest Wyoming on Thursday when he decided to take the Beartooth Highway to Red Lodge. As soon as he reached the 10,947-foot summit, he found himself navigating a blizzard.
"When I got to the top, all hell broke loose," he said. "It was an absolute whiteout for about 45 minutes. You couldn't see a thing. (It was) a heavy, heavy snow squall."
Bell said it was heavy enough that a snowplow was already clearing the road before it was over.
© Dave Bell
"All of the Beartooths and Absarokas were completely white," he said. "It was a wonderful day."
Similar snowstorms were encountered in Yellowstone overnight Thursday, another sign of the seasonal change that's right around the corner. Summer's almost over, and snow will be sticking around soon.
On Schedule
Bell might have witnessed the first significant snowfall on the Beartooth Highway this season. That'd be right on schedule for the higher elevations of northwest Wyoming, which typically turns white in mid-September.
"It's pretty common," said Noah Myers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Riverton. "As we get into fall, these weather systems become a little colder, and the colder air intrudes a little further south, especially up in Yellowstone and along with the Beartooth Highway. It's not uncommon to get snow up there this time of year."
Snowfall might be expected at this time of year, but Myers said it's too early for accumulation. It's still too warm for snow to stick across most of Wyoming, and even the highest mountain snow tends to melt quickly in September.
"Temperatures are still in the 40s on the Beartooth Highway, and it doesn't look particularly cold for the next week," he said. "Even if we get little snow up there, it may end up mostly melting again. That's also pretty typical for this time of year."
That's the seasonal pattern Bell observed on the Beartooth Highway. While the snow fell heavy and hard for nearly an hour, most of it had melted by the time he was heading out.
"Beartooth Lake had a dusting of snow when I went through it in the morning, but when I turned around and came back down, it was all gone," he said. "I saw four or five guys on motorcycles near the first summit who had to wait for the snow to melt before they could leave. I don't have any idea what they were thinking."
Reader Comments
More/less light, more/less heat, more/less food, more/less mobility, more/less activity, more/less opportunities
What would you replace it with? Or would you ignore the Earth/Solar relationship entirely and move us further away from any actual living connection with our world?
More towards Dawkins' and our current apparent scientific and political ideal of human beings being nothing more than meat robots, the entirety of existence no more than an unalive, blind, pitiless and indifferent machine?