Snow blitz features 'Clayton Street Angel'

In a week where snow seemed to be the story in Sanders County, a severe outlook of neighborliness has broken out.

First to call in was someone reporting the “Clayton Street Angel” in Plains, an anonymous gentleman with a plow on his truck who appears whenever the snow starts to pile up.

“He starts at one end of the street and goes all the way down,” plowing out people’s driveways, according to a grateful neighbor. “He wouldn’t want to be named, though, because he’s not the only one doing it.” Apparently, several other streets in Plains have been adopted by their own snow angels.

Trout Creek, Noxon, and Heron all reported versions of the same phenomenon. At least one neighborhood in the Trout Creek area sports a rural “tractor brigade” — at times as many as three tractors and a 4-wheeler with a plow blade can be seen pushing, lifting, and blowing snow over a couple mile stretch of driveways, sometimes meeting in the middle for a humble “How’s it goin’?” kind of neighborly chat. Mindful of the county plow crews, they are careful to remove their berms from the county roads.

Prior to the week’s big “dump,” the typical mid-winter ice pack had developed on many area back roads. There was a multiple vehicle “pileup” at the bottom of an icy hill on a side road outside Trout Creek. After one car got stuck, another tried to pull it out and got stuck, as did a third. The first was driven out and up the hill by a confident auto mechanic with the right touch on the accelerator. The others had to be dug and tugged.

Schools called off

All three west-end schools, Noxon, Trout Creek, and Thompson Falls, were put in the tough position of closing last Wednesday due to snow and, in Noxon School’s case, loss of power because of the snow. Thompson Falls Junior High had to call off its Friday ski trip due to I-90 being closed near Lookout Pass.

Snowfall brings levels to normal

The snow fall throughout last week looks to have improved the water supply outlook for the Lower Clark Fork watershed.

Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the federal agency responsible for measuring and recording precipitation, reported average snowpack (snow water equivalent) for Feb. 14 in this area at 19.2 inches, which was exactly at 100 percent of normal. As of the end of January, snowpack was at 84 percent of normal.

“Normal” is defined as the median for the 30-year stretch 1981-2010.

West end weather station report

Noxon/Bull River resident Dave Coupal continues to monitor the official National Weather Service station established by his father, the late Frank Coupal, in 1965. Dave reports that the recent February snowfall brought annual snowfall from 50% of normal as of February 1 up to just 10% below normal for that site by February 16.

Coupal’s monthly report for January:

“January continued the trend this winter with warmer than average temperatures, especially in the overnight lows. Total moisture for this water-year (since October 1, 2018) is 13.81” compared to 17.74 inches average (22 percent below average). Snow total for the water-year is 40.2 inches compared to 82.2-inch average (51 percent below normal). Poorman Creek SNOTEL site reports the snowpack is 63 inches (about 14 percent below average).”

Poorman Creek, the closest mountain snowpack monitoring site to Noxon, is located on the Libby side of the Cabinet Mountains, so it is not included in the Lower Clark Fork calculations.