Skies of Missouri River Country

The Skies of Missouri River Country

AN EVER-CHANGING PANORAMA OF LIGHT, CLOUDS AND STARS

The northern lights at Fort Peck Lake | Amy Lynne Nelson

Night skies, bright tents | Andy Austin

Day’s end in Missouri River Country, east of Jordan, MT | Rick and Susie Graetz

The Skies of Missouri River Country

From the moment the sun bursts onto the eastern horizon of Missouri River Country, Montana’s biggest sky becomes a canvas for artful displays of billowing clouds, fast moving storms, and breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. With nightfall, an astronomer’s dream of varied nocturnal displays takes center stage. Brilliant, twinkling diamonds crown the heavens over Fort Peck Lake, a full moon illuminates the snow-covered hills between Scobey and Plentywood, and meteors streak off in all directions. In a landscape free of competing lights, one might attend a performance of the color changing Northern Lights as they swirl and leap across the night sky.

It is as expansive a dome of sky as any on the planet and often brings an early morning and evening light so beautiful that no painter or photographer could ever duplicate it.

Subdued topography allows the sky top billing. Summer thunderstorms build to a towering collection of plump white and gray clouds that are then swept by the wind up into Canada or out onto the plains of the Dakotas, leaving glimmering sunshine over the prairie, often only to be replaced by another storm with intense lightning displays. In winter, northern born blizzards roll like turbulent waves across the uncluttered skyline depositing a quiet comforter of snow in their wake.

These are the skies of Northeast Montana!

Billowy summer clouds west of Opheim, MT | Rick and Susie Graetz

Trail to the Stars: trailtothestars.com