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Perhaps you, like me, were feeling optimistic heading into this summer. With many of the mountains around Montana at or near an average snowpack on April 1, there was good reason to believe that our rivers, forests and grasslands would have plenty of water leading into the year’s hottest months. It would be enough, I’d hoped, to keep our streams and lakes full and cool, to grow a bounty of crops for farmers, to support plenty of forage for wildlife, and to keep wildfires, grasshoppers and toxic algal blooms at bay.
But, as the Montana Drought and Water Supply Advisory Committee shared Wednesday, that is not how the summer shaped up. A warm May that led to rapid snowmelt converged with thirsty soils and a lingering, multi-year drought to squash my dreams. There are many contributing factors, but here are a few that came into focus at this week’s meeting:
- We had an “exceptionally hot, dry fall” in 2024, according to Troy Blandford, the Montana State Library’s water information manager. Last August through December was the warmest on record, and much of the state didn’t get a good killing frost until late October. The unusually long summer gave plants more time to suck moisture out of the ground, Blandford said. The overall result was a “deficit [that’s] hard to climb out of.”
- This April through June was warmer than average, particularly in the western part of the state. As a result, Montana’s snowpack — our proverbial water towers to sustain rivers and lakes through the summer — started melting early and fast. Indeed, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Park’s Region 2 Fisheries Manager Patrick Saffel noted in a June virtual town hall that some of the state’s reservoirs along the Rocky Mountain Front never filled this year.
- June — which is, somewhat surprisingly, often one of the wettest months in Montana — brought below-average precipitation for all but the southeastern quadrant of the state.
In practical terms, that means we’re looking at a situation where Montana rivers are, en masse, sitting around the 10th percentile for flow volume, and also running considerably warmer than average. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s network of stream gauges, seven rivers, mostly in the west-central region of the state, are posting record-low streamflows. With less water to sustain them, crops are not as robust and more vulnerable to disease and pests. Similarly, Montana’s forests are more apt to catch on fire and burn hotter when they ignite.
A presentation by Cory Calnan, the acting chief of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation’s fire protection bureau, generated an unexpected but welcome bright spot in an otherwise dismal drought discussion. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve had a very tame fire season so far this year — knock on wood. Although firefighters have responded to more blazes by mid-July than they did at this time last year, the overall acreage burned is down significantly: We’re talking 15,537 acres compared to 85,063 acres by this time last year. Said another way, fires are starting, but they’re just not getting that big. A few particularly wet storms — Calnan highlighted the “timely” Fourth of July thunderstorms that accompanied a recent cold front — have played a role in that.
Still, Blandford cautioned that we’re pretty well “locked into” a drought pattern — and an expanding one at that — until we come to a seasonal pattern change. That, he said, typically occurs sometime between mid-October and November. If, that is, temperatures and precipitation patterns cooperate.
—Amanda Eggert
The Viz 📈
Montana’s famous cow-to-person ratio has narrowed a bit. U.S. Department of Agriculture data from early 2024 shows 2.12 million cattle roaming the state alongside 1.14 million people. That’s still nearly two cows for every Montanan, but it’s down from the more dramatic ratios of years past. As recently as 2022, the ratio was more than two cows per person.
Of course, the statewide number only tells part of the story. Drive through rural Petroleum County in the central part of Montana and you’ll encounter one of the most lopsided landscapes in America: 525 people sharing space with more than 32,000 cattle, working out to 62 cows per person. Neighboring Garfield County runs a close second at 59:1, while Powder River County in the southeastern corner of the state clocks in at 50:1.
[GRAPHIC HERE?] (Final graphic is on the trello card. montanaMapEmbed-1200px)
Compare that to urban strongholds like Missoula County, where humans outnumber cattle 15:1. In Yellowstone County around Billings, people hold a 2.5-to-1 advantage — making it the lone eastern county where humans have the numerical advantage. Then there’s Mineral County in heavily forested northwestern Montana, an outlier that doesn’t fit the rural mold. Despite its smaller population, cattle numbers have dropped from 400 to 300 head, giving it the state’s most human-heavy ratio at 17:1.
The raw numbers tell their own story, too. Beaverhead County, around Dillon, leads the herd with 110,000 cattle, while Fergus (Lewistown) and Big Horn (Hardin) each top 90,000. Custer County, home to the livestock hub of Miles City, maintains 86,000 cows among its 12,000 residents — a solid 7:1 ratio that somehow feels modest compared to those eastern plains where cattle still rule by margins of 50 or 60 to 1.
— Jacob Olness
Water watch 🚰
Water returned to the St. Mary Canal, a century-old irrigation system designed to serve more than 120,000 acres of northwestern Montana, on Thursday after crews repaired structural failures near the embankment past Spider Lake. Unlike the catastrophic failure at the St. Mary siphon in June 2024 that hamstrung the system for a year, this incident occurred along the canal and stopped flow for only a few days.
The Milk River Project’s Facebook page wrote Thursday that “water was flowing through the rock and reappearing on the downstream side of the embankment, making it tricky to track.” Crews backfilled the problem areas.
Milk River Project manager Jennifer Patrick said Thursday in an interview with Montana Free Press that it would be difficult to immediately estimate the incident’s cost to repair. Though water did not flow into Fresno Reservoir while the canal was fixed, Patrick said she’s hopeful to make up for the lost time by continuing to fill the reservoir beyond the current cutoff date of Aug. 15.
Patrick praised crews’ rapid response to the incident, but stressed that there are continued obstacles to maintaining the waterway.
“There’s spots in the canal that have always leaked. It’s an earth canal. It’s not a structure,” Patrick said.
The canal currently flows at a rate of 600 cubic feet per second, roughly 250 cubic feet per second below its full capacity.
In a typical year, the hydro system provides about 2 vertical feet of water spread across each arable acre. Irrigators usually use all the water in their two yearly allotments: once in the spring and once in summer. This year, the canal system yielded about a quarter of its normal amount, meaning farmers irrigated with less water in the spring.
Congress did not allocate money in 2024 for large-scale improvements to the project. Patrick said she hopes the system’s challenges over the last year will inspire the federal government to consider paying for broader upgrades. An overhaul that would prevent future breakages and return the system to 850 cubic feet per second is estimated to cost around $200 million.
— Zeke Lloyd
Verbatim 💬
“I love grenades. And these fireworks are louder than the grenades I used to throw.”
— Great Falls City Commissioner Shannon Wilson
Wilson, a former Army mechanic, made the comment during a Tuesday work session meeting where commissioners and members of the public debated a possible fireworks ban within city limits. The discussion followed the July 2 death of a woman in a house fire that officials suspect was started by fireworks. Other Montana cities, including Missoula, Bozeman and Helena, already have fireworks bans on the books.
Great Falls allows residents to set off fireworks from July 2 to July 4 from 8 a.m. to midnight. Commissioners said that calls for a ban come up for discussion every year. City staff are working on a draft ordinance for the commission to consider at a later date.
— Matt Hudson
Following the Law ⚖️
Gallatin County passed an ordinance on Tuesday prohibiting camping on county-owned property and rights-of-way. The new rule will not directly impact the county’s incorporated towns of Bozeman, Belgrade, Manhattan, Three Forks and West Yellowstone.
Local ordinances prohibiting urban camping gained national attention in June 2024 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on public park camping in Grants Pass, Oregon.
Gallatin County Commissioner Scott MacFarlane, who voted for the recent policy alongside the two other commissioners, said the sheriff’s office gave the impression that police would implement the ordinance to “help the person move along” and “connect them with services.”
“There’s only a couple of instances in the last year or two that [the sheriff’s department] could point to where the ordinance really would have helped because somebody was really not willing to take the warning,” MacFarlane said in an interview with Montana Free Press on Thursday.
Inside city limits, Bozeman has struggled to keep up with 280% growth in the number of unhoused people between 2018 and 2024. The municipality maintains stringent regulations on urban camping.
Jeremy Kopp, Gallatin County’s undersheriff, applauded the timing of the commission’s ordinance.
“We recognize we don’t have a prolific problem now — that’s probably the best time to try and create some structure before you’re in the midst of a crisis, right?” Kopp said in an interview with MTFP on Thursday.
Other cities in Montana, including Helena, Great Falls and Missoula, are also wrestling with how to engage unhoused populations.
On Wednesday, Billings expanded its restrictions on urban camping through a law prohibiting sitting or sleeping in a public thoroughfare.
During its 2025 session, the state Legislature considered several pieces of legislation related to the increase in urban camping. Gov. Greg Gianforte ultimately signed two significant bills, House Bill 208 and House Bill 642, which together increase law enforcement’s capacity to regulate camping in public spaces.
Kopp and MacFarlane indicated the county is improving its support services for unhoused individuals.
The city of Bozeman will present on the effectiveness of its current urban camping at a public meeting scheduled for next week.
— Zeke Lloyd
By the Numbers 🔢
The amount of attorneys fees the state of Montana owes the ACLU of Montana after the nonprofit civil rights group won a lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 458, a 2023 law that created new definitions of “sex,” “male” and “female” in state code.
Attorneys for a successful party in a lawsuit can ask the court to award them fees as part of the overall judgment. That scenario has played out repeatedly as plaintiff groups have challenged Montana’s GOP-backed laws or the actions of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration since 2021. The sum announced by the ACLU of Montana in mid-July is not the largest the state could potentially fork over — attorneys who represented the youth plaintiffs in the Held climate lawsuit are currently fighting for more than $3 million.
SB 458 could also still produce more fees for attorneys who helped challenge it on separate constitutional grounds. Upper Seven Law, another nonprofit law firm, received a separate ruling finding SB 458 unconstitutional in February of this year. As of July, the firm has not yet moved for attorneys fees to be awarded.
—Mara Silvers
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
The state filed a lawsuit over how Crazy Mountain Ranch was watering its golf course.
Lawmakers pulled off a veto override outside the legislative session.
The typical Montana home is worth 66% more than four years ago.
On Our Radar 
Leigh — As a girl who’s never done anything casually in her whole life, it was validating to read this deep dive into the sometimes complicated social dynamics of reading a book in public. However, one of my key takeaways might just be gratitude for my Kindle. Am I reading an Emily Henry book or “A Confederacy of Dunces”? The world will never know. (But do feel free to ask.)
Brad — I was just looking for something to do with a cool wooden box. Now I hate my whole yard.
Katie — While actress Rachel Brosnahan may be in the spotlight as Lois Lane in the new Superman movie, to me she’s still a 1960s housewife-turned-comedian as I catch up on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” The show, which wrapped up in 2023, is an entertaining blend of comedy-industry shenanigans and family drama.
Jacob — I didn’t realize how complex modern weigh stations are until I read this deep dive from Hackaday. What look like simple roadside stops are actually bristling with sensors — piezoelectric scales, infrared cameras, axle spacing detectors, and even license plate readers and logging device scanners — all working together to catch everything from flat tires to human trafficking. The piece includes a satellite photo of the weigh station in Haugan, where eastbound and westbound traffic both exit left to use a median-scale facility — a clever bit of engineering that saves space and cost.
Zeke — July is one of the best months for romantic comedies. After watching a movie, I like sitting on my roof and reliving my favorite scenes in the warmth of Montana’s late-evening light. Marc Webb’s “(500) Days of Summer” is a great place to start. Nothing fits the season better.
Mara — Summer might be well underway but I haven’t had nearly enough picnics. In an effort to make up for lost time, I’m prepping an ambitious spread for Helena’s annual Symphony Under the Stars this Saturday. Likely on the picnic blanket menu: a well-balanced charcuterie board like so, beet dip (don’t you dare knock it until you try it), maybe this chicken salad and key lime pie bars for dessert.
Eric — I’ve been trying for years to understand what’s happening with rural broadband access across Montana as the feds throw hundreds of millions of dollars at boosting connectivity. While I’m not sure I buy all the arguments it makes, this big, long piece from Washington Monthly helps put what’s often felt like painfully slow progress in a national context.
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