Live from the National Weather Service

Montana Storm Alerts

Active National Weather Service hail, wind, thunderstorm, tornado, tropical and winter storm alerts covering Montana, with the counties each one names and the office that issued it — plus what the state’s severe-weather season looks like and how each of these events actually damages a roof.

Below that, in its own lane, the smoke and fire family: fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust and volcanic ashfall.

3 active alerts · read from the National Weather Service at Sep 7, 5:00 PM EDT · refreshed every 10 minutes

This page is informational and is not a safety resource. It exists to show roofing professionals where storm damage has been reported, and it is refreshed on a ten-minute cycle, so it can lag the Weather Service.

During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Active storm alerts in Montana

Reproduced exactly as the National Weather Service issued them. Alerts frequently cross state lines, so a county list may name counties in a neighbouring state. Smoke and fire alerts are reported separately, in their own lane below.

Severe Thunderstorm Warning

SevereUrgencyImmediateCertaintyObserved

Issued by NWS Glasgow MT

In effect from Sep 7, 2:47 PM local · until Sep 7, 3:45 PM local

Max hail sizeUp to .75Max wind gust60 MPH

Counties named in this alert

Garfield, MT
McCone, MT
Prairie, MT

Read the full National Weather Service text

NWS headline

Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued September 7 at 2:47PM MDT until September 7 at 3:45PM MDT by NWS Glasgow MT

NWS description

SVRGGW The National Weather Service in Glasgow has issued a * Severe Thunderstorm Warning for... Southeastern Garfield County in northeastern Montana... Southwestern McCone County in northeastern Montana... Northwestern Prairie County in northeastern Montana... * Until 345 PM MDT. * At 247 PM MDT, a severe thunderstorm was located 12 miles east of Cohagen, or 29 miles southeast of Jordan, moving east at 45 mph. HAZARD...60 mph wind gusts. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Expect damage to roofs, siding, and trees. * Locations impacted include... Circle, Flowing Wells Rest Area, Brockway, Hillside, Crow Rock, Watkins, and Van Norman.

NWS instructions

For your protection move to an interior room on the lowest floor of a building.

View this alert on weather.gov

Special Weather Statement

ModerateUrgencyExpectedCertaintyObserved

Issued by NWS Great Falls MT

In effect from Sep 7, 2:36 PM local · until Sep 7, 3:15 PM local

Max hail size0.25Max wind gustUp to 30 MPH

Counties named in this alert

Fergus County below 4500ft
Snowy and Judith Mountains

Read the full National Weather Service text

NWS headline

Special Weather Statement issued September 7 at 2:36PM MDT by NWS Great Falls MT

NWS description

At 235 PM MDT, trained weather spotters reported strong thunderstorms along a line extending from 8 miles southeast of Winifred to 14 miles north of Lewistown. Movement was east at 30 mph. HAZARD...Pea size hail. SOURCE...Trained weather spotters reported pea size hail falling near Hilger. IMPACT...Minor hail damage to vegetation is possible. Locations impacted include... Roy, Fergus, Suffolk, Hilger, and Christina.

NWS instructions

If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.

View this alert on weather.gov

Special Weather Statement

ModerateUrgencyExpectedCertaintyObserved

Issued by NWS Billings MT

In effect from Sep 7, 2:52 PM local · until Sep 7, 3:45 PM local

Max hail size0.00Max wind gust50 MPH

Counties named in this alert

Northern Rosebud
Custer

Read the full National Weather Service text

NWS headline

Special Weather Statement issued September 7 at 2:52PM MDT by NWS Billings MT

NWS description

At 252 PM MDT, Doppler radar was tracking gust front and line of showers extending from 52 miles north of Miles City to 13 miles northwest of Miles City, moving east at 45 mph. HAZARD...Wind gusts of 40 to 50 mph. SOURCE...Radar indicated. IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around unsecured objects. Locations impacted include... Miles City, Rosebud, Matthews Recreation Area, Strawberry Hill Recreation Area, Angela, Hathaway, Rock Springs, Locate and Cartersville.

NWS instructions

If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.

View this alert on weather.gov

Radar over Montana

Straight from radar.weather.gov and regenerated by NOAA roughly every two minutes.

National Weather Service radar for the Northern Rockies, covering Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. — Where precipitation is falling over Montana right now. The National Weather Service publishes these mosaics by region rather than by state, so the frame runs past the state line and neighbouring states are visible in it. Radar shows precipitation, not damage — a return over a county is not evidence that any particular building was hit.
Radar imagery: the National Weather Service. Served directly from radar.weather.gov, a free US Government service, and regenerated by NOAA roughly every two minutes — your browser picks up new frames on its own. This site does not process, re-colour or re-time the imagery; it is the Weather Service’s own mosaic, unmodified. weather.gov
This radar is informational and is not a safety resource. During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Smoke & fire lane

Smoke & fire alerts in Montana

The National Weather Service issues a separate family of alerts for fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust and volcanic ashfall. This lane reports that family for Montana, kept apart from the storm alerts above because the two answer different questions.

Wildfire smoke is what drives smoke-damage losses, and it reaches a building through the same vents that keep an attic dry — which is why it belongs on a roofing page at all. Alerts describing particulate already in the air are listed ahead of fire-weather forecasts; that ordering is this lane’s own and is not a Weather Service ranking.

0 active smoke or fire alerts · read from the National Weather Service at Sep 7, 5:00 PM EDT · refreshed every 10 minutes

No active smoke or fire alerts

The National Weather Service has no active fire weather, dense smoke, air quality, blowing dust or volcanic ashfall alerts covering Montana as of this refresh.

An empty list here is the ordinary reading, not a fault and not a gap in the data. Most of the country carries nothing in this family on most days, and this lane fills itself the moment the Weather Service issues something.

The 12 alert types this lane reports

Every one is a National Weather Service product and is listed under the name the Weather Service gives it. Grouping them into families is ours; the names are not.

Fire weather: Fire WarningExtreme Fire DangerRed Flag WarningFire Weather Watch
Dense smoke: Dense Smoke Advisory
Air quality: Air Quality Alert
Blowing dust: Blowing Dust WarningDust Storm WarningBlowing Dust AdvisoryDust Advisory
Volcanic ashfall: Ashfall WarningAshfall Advisory

The Weather Service defines each of these products and this site does not attempt to. What any one of them means, and the criteria an office issues it under, are at weather.gov.

This lane is informational and is not a safety resource. It reports which National Weather Service smoke and fire alerts are active and where, on a ten-minute refresh cycle, so it can lag the Weather Service.

During an active weather event, the authority is weather.gov and your local emergency management agency. Follow them, not this page.

Smoke exposure and air quality are health matters, and this page does not address them. It does not tell you whether it is safe to be outdoors or to work, what an air quality index number means for you or for anyone in your household, or what respiratory protection to use. Those questions belong with a clinician and with the agency that issued the alert. The federal air-quality authority is airnow.gov.

What smoke does to a roof assembly

An active alert is a record of conditions, not a finding about any building. These are the standing references on the building-assembly side of a smoke or fire loss.

Smoke odor in roof decking and attic insulationWhy odor outlives the visible repairs — deposition into bare decking and framing, insulation acting as a reservoir, and the difference between cleaning, sealing and removing. The article that covers wildfire smoke reaching an attic through the vents, with the roof itself untouched.Fire damage to a roof assemblyDirect flame against radiant heat, shingle distortion and mat delamination, charred sheathing and loss of section, and why a roof that looks intact from the ground can still be condemned.Roof replacement after a fireHow the repair-or-replace decision is built on a fire loss: partial against full deck replacement, the boundary between charred and heat-affected wood, matching, and the code upgrades a repair can trigger.Ventilation holes and fire department roof damageFire crews cut the roof on purpose. What vertical ventilation is for, how tactical damage is separated from fire damage in a scope, and what an opened deck needs in the meantime.Smoke Mitigation Network — directory listingLaboratory smoke damage testing and documentation, listed under Restoration & Mitigation → Smoke Damage Testing & Assessment. Whether a building is contaminated is established by sampling rather than by looking at it. The listing discloses that it shares ownership with this directory.

Severe weather season in Montana

Peak season

June–August for thunderstorms, November–March for winter

Montana’s summer thunderstorms can produce hail and damaging outflow wind, generally as isolated events across a large area rather than as widespread outbreaks. The larger and more consistent roofing concern is winter: heavy snow, deep drifting and the strong downslope chinook winds that come off the Rockies, which can produce sustained non-convective gusts with no storm overhead.

Seasons describe a pattern, not a schedule. The National Weather Service issues these products year-round, and the live list above is the only authority on what is actually running in Montana right now.

What NOAA has recorded in Montana

The archived record, not the live feed. Severe weather logged by the National Centers for Environmental Information over the covered years, split into the events NOAA keys to a county and the events it keys to a forecast zone.

Between 2016 and 2026, NOAA recorded 4,273 county-level severe-weather events across Montana: 2,379 thunderstorm wind events, 1,854 hail reports, 38 tornadoes, 1 high wind event and 1 strong wind event. Of the 1,854 hail reports carrying a measured size, 1,640 were 1.00 in across or larger.

A further 6,415 events over the same period were recorded against National Weather Service forecast zones rather than counties — 3,869 high wind events, 1,445 winter storms, 800 heavy snow events, 206 blizzards and 75 strong wind events. A forecast zone is not a county: it can span several or subdivide one, so these are reported here at state level and appear in no county total on this site.

County-keyed events

4,273

2016–2026

Zone-keyed events

6,415

statewide, not county-attributable

Hail 1.00 in or larger

1,640

of 1,854 sized hail reports

Tornadoes

in the county record

Counties with the heaviest record

Ranked by the number of county-keyed events NOAA recorded, 2016–2026. 56 of Montana’s counties carry a record in this dataset.

Yellowstone County310largest hail 3.00 in (Softball+) · peak gust 78 kt (about 90 mph)
Valley County294largest hail 4.00 in (Softball+) · peak gust 78 kt (about 90 mph)
Cascade County173largest hail 3.00 in (Softball+) · peak gust 76 kt (about 87 mph)
Roosevelt County165largest hail 3.50 in (Softball+) · peak gust 90 kt (about 104 mph)
Phillips County156largest hail 3.00 in (Softball+) · peak gust 77 kt (about 89 mph)
Fergus County153largest hail 2.50 in (Baseball) · peak gust 101 kt (about 116 mph)
Rosebud County147largest hail 2.75 in (Softball+) · peak gust 68 kt (about 78 mph)
Dawson County141largest hail 4.00 in (Softball+) · peak gust 74 kt (about 85 mph)

Preliminary — not yet in the permanent archive

214 further preliminary storm reports have been filed against Montana counties since June 1, 2026. They are counted separately from every archived figure above and are not added to any of them.

Preliminary reports covering 2026-05-31 onward come from National Weather Service storm reports filed as events occur. They have not yet been through the quality-control review that produces the permanent archive, and individual reports may later be revised, combined or withdrawn.

County figures and state figures. County figures count events NOAA recorded against a county (hail, thunderstorm wind and tornadoes). High wind, winter storms, ice storms, blizzards, heavy snow, hurricanes and tropical storms are recorded against National Weather Service forecast zones rather than counties, so they are reported at state level instead. Counts reflect events that were observed and reported. NOAA does occasionally record one of those against a county instead. Where it has, the event sits in the county-keyed total above rather than the zone-keyed one — in Montana that applies to high wind events and strong wind events.

Source. Archived figures come from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information Storm Events Database, covering 2016 through May 31, 2026. Reports after that date come from NOAA Storm Prediction Center preliminary storm reports. Both are US Government works in the public domain. This is a record of past weather; the live alert list at the top of this page is the only authority on what is running in Montana now.

What these storms do to a roof

The damage mechanisms that matter in Montana, in the order they generate work here.

Hail

Hail damages an asphalt shingle in two ways at once. The impact knocks granules off the surface, and it can bruise or fracture the asphalt mat underneath without breaking the surface open. Granules are what shield the asphalt from ultraviolet light, so a roof that has lost them ages faster from that point on. A fractured mat is the reason hail damage is often described as latent: the roof may not leak the week of the storm, and the failure shows up later. On metal panels and metal accessories, hail leaves dents, which raises the separate question of whether the damage is cosmetic or has actually compromised the panel or its coating.

Straight-line wind

Wind damage on a shingle roof usually starts as a broken seal rather than a missing shingle. Uplift pressure is highest at the edges — rakes, eaves, ridges and hips — and along any line where the roof plane changes, so that is where tabs lift and the factory sealant strip lets go first. Once the seal is broken, a shingle that still looks fine from the ground is no longer bonded to the course below it and every later wind event works on the same spot. Wind also drives debris, and impact damage from a branch or from another roof’s material is a separate mechanism from uplift.

Snow load and winter storms

Winter loads a roof rather than striking it. Accumulated snow is a sustained weight on the structure, and drifting means the load is rarely spread evenly — it piles against ridges, dormers, valleys and the low side of any change in roof height. Melt-and-refreeze adds the second mechanism: heat escaping through the roof melts snow that then refreezes at the cold eave, and the resulting ice can back water up under the covering, which sheds water flowing downhill but not water standing still.

Why the storm date matters

Property insurance works from a date of loss — a specific storm on a specific day over a specific area, not a general observation that a roof looks worn. That is why the county list and the effective and expiry times on each alert above are the useful part of this page: they are the National Weather Service’s own record that a given event covered a given county at a given time.

It also matters because hail damage is frequently latent. A fractured shingle mat can take a long time to become a leak, so the gap between the storm and the discovery can be considerable — and by then, establishing which storm did it is a records question rather than an observation. An alert naming a county is not evidence that any particular building was damaged; it is evidence of what the weather was doing over that county, which is where an assessment starts rather than where it ends.

Next steps in Montana

Roofing contractors in MontanaBrowse the Montana directory by city and county.Montana licensing rulesWhether roofers must be licensed here, which board issues it, and the bond and insurance rules.Storm damage roof repair guideHow hail and wind damage is identified, documented and repaired.National storm centerActive alerts across all 50 states and DC, busiest first.

Source: the National Weather Service. Every alert on this page comes from the NWS public alerts feed at api.weather.gov, a free US Government service, and is reproduced as the issuing office wrote it. The office that issued each alert is named on the alert itself.

This site does not edit, summarise or re-grade Weather Service text. Alerts are filtered into two separate lists — the event types that affect roofs, and the smoke, fire and airborne-particulate family — and each list is sorted. Nothing else is changed, and no alert is moved between the two lists to suit a heading.

weather.gov