In Focus–Livingston

Livingston is a neat town in West Alabama in the heart of Sumter County. It is an excellent place to live and raise a family. It is also the home of the University of West Alabama. My sister attended school there after graduating from Akron High School way back when it was known as Livingston State College.

But wait!!! That is not the Livingston that we want to focus on today. Let’s talk about Livingston, Montana, a unique town of 7500 hardy souls in South/Central Montana that has a distinct weather feature unlike most places.

Livingston is located where north/south US-89 intersects with east/west I-90. But more important, it is on the Yellowstone River and that is where they have some weather problems. Not because of the water in Yellowstone River, so let’s go back a bit and explain.

The Yellowstone River has its beginning in Lake Yellowstone inside Yellowstone National Park. The river drains out of the lake and northward into Southern Montana and then toward the NE through Eastern Montana. It joins the Missouri River along the North Dakota border and both rivers feed water into Lake Sakakawea. We all know that the Missouri eventually joins the Mississippi and drains into the Gulf of Mexico.

But wait!!! I am ahead of myself. Livingston is on the banks of the Yellowstone River and is much lower in elevation than Yellowstone National Park. Bitter cold air builds up over Yellowstone and surrounding mountains. It’s easiest outlet is to pour down the Yellowstone River Valley. The result is that Livingston is a very windy place.

The bitter cold air being heavier accelerates as it gets into the lower elevations and also heats by compression, sort of a Chinook effect. There are days, especially in winter and spring, when the wind may gust over 60 mph for hours on end with no thunderstorms or fronts involved.

If I lived there, I would want to ring the inside of my hat with Velcro, otherwise it would blow right off. On second thought, I don’t even wear a hat.

I think it is fascinating to note that winter snow melt in Yellowstone Park could eventually pass into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans, but there are a lot of obstacles.

On the way, the water may help water skiing on Lewis and Clark Lake along the Nebraska/North Dakota line; some of it could wind up in a coffeepot in Pierre, South Dakota or St. Louis; some of it may be used to take a shower in Omaha; even the average of 44 inches of snow in Livingston has to drain downstream.

Mind you, a lot of that water could soak in to become part of an underground aquifer. (I love hydrology.)

And, don’t forget evaporation!

Livingston has a population of 7,500. Their average low temperature in January is 16 and the average in July and August is 85. They get less than 15 inches of precipitation a year. Therefore, I would prefer Livingston, Alabama where the annual average is well over 50 inches.

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