Road Conditions: Wheatland County, Montana

I was driving from Choteau Montana to Reed Point Montana, a 250 mile journey down mostly 2 lane roads.  The weather said there were going to be pockets of rain all across the s

I checked the weather conditions in all the small towns along my route for the day.

It was nice along my route, looking toward all the little moutain ranges around me, The Little Belt Mountains, Snowy Mountains, and Crazy Mountains were all socked in with dark looming clouds that seemed to hover over the ranges.

It was nice in Harlowton, but when I turned south Boomer started wining.  I had just pottied him, but his stool was a bit loose so I was going to find a spot to let him out.  When I crested the hill I looked in front of me and saw a shot of lighning in the distant sky.  Looked like I was going to get to go through a storm after all.  I decided Boomer does not like lighning and brilliant dog that he is knew we should wait.  If I would have waited I probably could have skipped the storm.

Harlowton is in Wheatland county.  The road is older with no shoulder and large cupped grooves in the road from all the truck traffic that in the past couple years got diverted over to.  

I could see the storm ahead and slowed down.  The weather went from dry to torrential down pour in the blink of an eye, I was driving 45 mph when a huge wind gust that yanked me all over the road as I was towing my highprofile 14 foot box trailer.  At one point I thought something was wrong with my truck.  I decided it was the combo of the wind gust and the crash landing in the pond of water that was on the road. 

The torential rain continued, but it started including some snow.  The black cows on the side of the road were turning white, and it was like giant pieces of wet slush slamming into my windshield.  The cars and pickups going the other way looked more like boats with large wakes each in turn splashing the slushy mess from the roadway onto my windshield.  Wish I had a dash cam to catch the cool sight of them coming down the road. 

When it started to calm down and the the cars had all passed I took this shot.    

The rest of the trip was nice and dry so out of the 250 miles I drove I only had 1 mile of bad weather.

Shortly after the road got dry I crossed into Sweetgrass county, where the road has been updated, no cupped pavement, and a nice shoulder.  Would have been much less exciting had the storm cell been just a couple miles south of where it was.