north Idaho and western Montana are having a normal winter. yes, we have snow down low, so everyone assumes major winter. but in the mountains, it has been normal.
this is coming from a winter freak, not a worried about the animals person. The animals have dealt with way more snow than this before.
No tim, not everyone is assuming that the snowfall is worse this year, maybe you are correct about the snow in your area but don't forget that snow levels change almost ridge by ridge in the mountains. But rather than assuming, I based my remark on actual weather station data and personal experience, and I don't live in the low lands, I live just under 5700 feet in a national forest about 3 miles west of the Continental Divide, probably a lot closer to the Bob Marshall than you do so while my personal guess isn't any more qualified than yours it's definitely based on ground conditions that are much closer to the Bob Marshall.
The USDA web site that I linked to shows that the official amount of snow recorded for the beginning of March, every year since 2010, at their Wood Creek station (elevation 5960 ft.). This year there was 31 inches of snow at that station, last year there was 16 inches of snow for the same date, so there was twice as much snow on the ground this year compared to last year. Total accumulated snow levels are higher too, 15 inches this year vs. 8.7 inches last year. March isn't over yet so this month will accumulate more snow before the season is done. In fact we are in the middle of several days of snow right now. We've had two days straight so far and about 10 inches of snow, I suspect that we will have almost a foot before this storm finishes. This is what we woke up to this morning.
As for my personal experience, I live off of a forest service road and I plow the snow for about 200 yards to get to my property (100 yards of that is on my property) and last year I had no problem with pushing the snow of the roads but this year I was running out of places to push it, thank goodness we experienced a few days of 40 degree weather, about half the snow melted over those few days and gave me room for the current snow storm we're going through. The snow started late this year but we had several heavy snow days each month in this area and the temperatures were lower than normal so our the melts haven't happened as early. Most of the game organizations are predicting that there might be a higher than normal winter kill of deer and elk this year because of the increased snow amounts.
