There’s one more weekend of summer before it’s officially fall in the Northern Hemisphere. But you wouldn’t have guessed it was still summer a few weeks ago in Glacier National Park. A summer snow storm shut down Glacier’s popular Going-to-the-Sun Road, and the photos are a bit shocking (especially for those of us who live in warm climates).
Glacier National Park is in northern Montana, close to the Canada/U.S. border. Sure, it gets cold there, sometimes even in the summer season . . . but it’s not usually this cold.
Tonya Monarch Lonsbury drives a tour bus in Glacier, and she recently shared her experience getting stuck in the snow on the Going-to-the-Sun Road for over 2.5 hours. Her guests got out, thankfully, but she and several other bus drivers were there for quite a while as they waited for crews to get the roads up to par before they could move on.
“Do you wanna build a snowman?” Lonsbury asks in her Instagram caption sharing photos and videos of the summer snow storm in Glacier. “Going down as the most memorable day of the season, lol!! [. . .] Blizzard in August!”
See Lonsbury’s photos and videos here:
Is Summer Snow Normal in Glacier?
No. The National Park Service (NPS) has a graphic on the Glacier National Park page with average temperatures and precipitation numbers for West Glacier, Montana. In August, the average minimum temperature is 35°F and the average maximum is 82°F. Over a 30-year period, the average August snowfall in West Glacier is 0 inches.
Obviously, this August was different.
Has the weather ever shocked you while visiting a national park?