Grand Forks, North Dakota to Corvallis, Oregon

This is an interesting trip to me, one that will cover 3 days and 1,639 miles. We’re hitting a lot of open territory. Big Sky Country, as some have called it. We’ll carry a pace of 65.6mph and break the trip into 524.5 mile segments, with a little extra for day three. Drive fast, the speed limit allows it!

DAY ONE (Saturday)

(May 17, 2006 Grand Forks, ND) Ð Aerial view of Grand Forks mitigation project building new levee walls, burns and pumping stations protecting the city from the Red River. Photo by Brenda Riskey/UND

A surface wave centered over Minnesota is kicking up light rain all throughout Minnesota, encroaching on the Red River. High pressure is going to strengthen and squash the disturbed weather to the southeast. It’s going to be a little chilly, relatively speaking, to start the day, but it should warm quickly in western North Dakota. Eastern Montana will be sunny and warm, and in honor of the drive on Saturday, and the rest of the journey to come, we will stop in Miles City, Montana.

DAY TWO (Sunday)
Eastern Montana is wide open pastures and prairies, and becomes mountainous around Butte and Helena. We’ll run into showers and thunderstorms right here, where the prairies run into the Rocky Mountains. The storms will be widely scattered and may even be dry, and when we start getting to western exposures around Missoula and westward, the threat will significantly lessen. We’ll make it to the Clark Fork River Crossing near Tarkio for the end of the night.

DAY THREE (Monday)
Another shorth wave is moving ashore Sunday night, and some more of those spotty, potentially dry storms in the chimney of Idaho. It’s going to be dry after that in the Pacific Northwest. Fortunately, the Gulf of Alaska gyre is reforming, but for the time being, sit’s still hot in the Pacific Northwest

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