Glacier County, Montana
Rocky Mountain Front · Cut Bank · Two Medicine and Milk River headwaters · 30 miles east of Glacier National Park
- Check current snowpack, drought, streamflow, and soil moisture before stocking, hay buying, or destocking.
- See where Glacier County calves moved in 2023 — destinations, seasonal pattern, and shipping windows.
- Look up water rights, parcels, and ownership via Cadastral, DNRC WRQS, and WaterMapper.
- Reach the District 9 brand inspector and verify cattle-buyer bonds before consigning.
Snowpack · SWE
Snow Water Equivalent — water that would result if today’s snowpack melted now.
Water-Year Precip
Total precipitation since Oct 1 — the start of the NRCS water year.
Drought Monitor
Worst drought class anywhere in the county per the U.S. Drought Monitor.
D0 abnormally dry · D1 moderate · D2 severe · D3 extreme · D4 exceptional. Percentages = share of county area at or worse than each class.
Streamflow
Cubic feet per second flowing past the nearest in-county USGS gauge right now.
Soil Moisture
No Montana Mesonet soil-moisture station in this county.
Precip Anomaly
Inches above (+) or below (−) the 1901–2000 average for the latest completed 1-, 3- and 12-month periods (NOAA NCEI, monthly data) — not the water year (see the separate Water-Year Precip tile for that).
1-mo = last 30 days · 3-mo = last 90 days · 12-mo = trailing year.
12-mo bands: > +1″ wet · −0.5″ to +1″ near normal · −2″ to −0.5″ dry · < −2″ very dry.
Reading this dashboard — what these terms mean
Median vs. mean. We use the median (NRCS standard) so a single very-wet or very-dry year doesn’t skew the baseline.
Water year. Hydrology runs Oct 1 → Sep 30. Most of a year’s snowpack accumulation is captured in the same season it melts.
Percentile (streamflow). 50 = exactly typical for this calendar date. 19 = today’s flow is lower than 81 % of all readings ever recorded on this date. 81 = lower than only 19 %.
VWC (soil moisture). Volumetric Water Content. Rough field bands: under 10 % = dry, 15–25 % = productive growing-season range, over 35 % = saturated.
Drought scale. D0–D4 from the U.S. Drought Monitor, weekly Thursday release. The percentages tell you what fraction of county area is at or worse than each band — a county can be 100 % at D2 with 0 % at D3.
Precip anomaly. Inches above or below the 1901–2000 average for the latest completed 1-, 3- and 12-month periods (NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance, monthly data). Not the water year — the Water-Year Precip tile is the water-year measure. Anomaly is in inches; “% of median” is a ratio. Both useful; anomaly is easier to interpret when comparing a dry summer month to a wet spring month.
Forage Condition. A 0–100 county-scale index of rangeland forage conditions relative to this county’s own historical normal, blending satellite-observed vegetation response, growing-season moisture, drought stress, and usability. Higher = more favorable relative to local normal. Categories: 0–25 Poor, 26–50 Fair, 51–75 Good, 76–100 Excellent. Long-Term Forage Potential is a separate long-run rating, not part of the score. Beta — for regional screening and comparison, not a pasture-level forage inventory or stocking-rate recommendation.
How often this updates. The moisture and drought tiles (snowpack, streamflow, soil moisture, rain, water-year precip, drought class) refresh every morning. The Forage Condition score’s satellite vegetation read — and the separate Hay & Pasture read — refresh weekly (Mondays), because the underlying satellite imagery only updates on a ~16-day cycle. So the water tiles move day to day; the vegetation reads step forward about once a week.
Glacier County in context
Adjacent counties in the the Rocky Mountain Front corridor. Glacier County shares the Two Medicine and Lewis Range snowpack system with these neighbors.
Click any neighbor for its full county dashboard.
Snowpack & Moisture Detail
SNOTEL station-by-station read for Glacier County. The dashboard above gives current aggregate; this section shows where the water actually is.
Glacier County snowpack is critically below median across 1 reporting stations at the last spring reading (June 4, 2026). Snowpack has since melted out for the season, so this section shows how the 2026 snow season ended, not current conditions. One SNOTEL station monitors county snowpack. Glacier County watershed snowpack critically below normal (Many Glacier 34% of median).
| Station | Elev (ft) | SWE (in) | % of Median | Relevance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Many Glacier | 4,930 | 0.0 | 34% | Glacier County — elevation 4930 ft |
Basin Index: Glacier County watershed snowpack critically below normal (Many Glacier 34% of median). Drought Monitor (valid 2026-09-08): No drought (D1+) in the county. Coverage at or worse than each class: D0 7%, D1 0%, D2 0%, D3 0%, D4 0%. Station snapshot as of September 17, 2026 — live dashboard above is current.
Two-Week Rainfall
Observed (prior 14 days) and forecast (next 14 days) · Glacier County · as of 2026-09-17
| Period | Window | Rain (in) | Normal (in) | % of Normal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prior 2 weeks (observed) | Sep 3 – Sep 16, 2026 | 2.16 | 0.70 | 309% |
| Next 2 weeks (forecast) | Sep 17 – Sep 30, 2026 | 1.20 | 0.68 | 176% |
Observed detail: 6 measurable-rain day(s) in the prior two weeks; largest single day 1.19 in.
Forecast source: NWS/NOAA api.weather.gov (days 1–7) blended with Open-Meteo gridded model (days 8–14). The next-14-day total is model-derived — NOAA quantitative precipitation forecast is precise only through ~7 days, and days 8–14 are a model blend, not an observed gauge reading.
Water Rights, Irrigation & Land Ownership
Glacier County drains eastward into the Milk River basin, with the Two Medicine River and Cut Bank Creek as the primary arteries. Both streams confluence with the Milk River downstream near Shelby and Havre.
The Two Medicine and Cut Bank Creek systems support irrigation for native hay meadows and stock water for cow-calf operations across the county’s bench country. Senior water rights in this basin date to the 1890s homestead era, with many held by the Blackfeet Nation under senior federal reserved rights that take priority in low-flow years. The Milk River compact between Montana and Canada adds a transboundary dimension that can restrict diversions in dry years. Over-allocation is a concern in drought years, particularly on Cut Bank Creek below the Blackfeet Reservation boundary. Secondary water sources include stock ponds filled by spring runoff and shallow wells in alluvial valleys. Ranchers near Browning and Cut Bank typically hold older priority dates tied to original homestead filings.
Federal Grazing Leases
BLM and U.S. Forest Service permitted grazing on public-land allotments · Glacier County
| System | Allotments | Permitted use | Public acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| BLM | 4 | 287 AUMs | 1,102 |
| U.S. Forest Service | 1 | 345 head-months | 28,943 |
AUMs (BLM) and head-months (USFS) are both animal-unit-months — one animal grazing for one month, the standard measure of authorized use. Acres are BLM public acres and USFS GIS acres on the mapped allotments.
Statewide maps: BLM allotment map · Forest Service allotment map. Excludes Montana DNRC state-trust grazing leases.
Land Resources
Three independent estimates of how Glacier County’s land is used — shown side by side, never blended
Every acreage figure below comes from an independent source that measures the land a different way. We show them side by side — and never blend reported acreage, satellite pixels and tax classifications into one unexplained number. Total county area 1,916,897 acres · land in farms 1,115,475 acres (58% of the county).
🗺 Open the interactive land map for Glacier County →
See crops, range, irrigated fields, public land and ownership parcels drawn live on the map.
Principal crops — official vs. satellite
| Crop | USDA Census 2022 (acres harvested) | Satellite CDL 2023 (acres present) |
|---|---|---|
| Winter wheat | 72,380 | 91,969 |
| Spring wheat | 36,882 | 50,051 |
| Durum wheat | 3,137 | 8,266 |
| Barley | 56,438 | 149,929 |
| Oats | 233 | 829 |
| Corn | — | 279 |
| Alfalfa hay | 21,706 | 62,349 |
| Other hay | 26,667 | 37,004 |
| Dry peas | 19,791 | 18,102 |
| Lentils | 9,745 | 13,209 |
| Chickpeas | 8,012 | 6,754 |
| Canola | 1,700 | 2,329 |
| Flaxseed | withheld | 1,652 |
| Sorghum | — | 101 |
These columns measure different things, so they should not match. The Census counts acres actually harvested in the census year, as reported by producers; the Cropland Data Layer counts every acre the satellite saw in that crop, including fields in a crop–fallow rotation and stands not harvested. Winter wheat is the clearest example: much of the county’s wheat ground sits in fallow in any given year, so the satellite total runs well above harvested acres. CDL also over-attributes hay and forage on native range. “Withheld” means the Census suppressed the value to protect an individual operation’s privacy.
How the county’s acres classify
| Land class | USDA Census 2022 | Satellite CDL 2023 | DOR assessment 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cropland (total) | 424,584 | 461,288 | 333,953 |
| of which harvested | 261,492 | — | — |
| Irrigated land | 17,646 | — | 10,836 |
| Pasture & rangeland | 644,051 | 1,009,361 | 338,111 |
| Forest / woodland | 34,279 | 326,972 | 172,758 |
| Developed | — | 21,204 | — |
| Water & wetlands | — | 43,299 | — |
Three ways of counting the same ground. Census figures are producer-reported acres in farms; the satellite column is a wall-to-wall pixel classification of the whole county (so it also sees developed land, water and non-farm ground the others do not); the assessment column is the Montana Department of Revenue’s parcel-level tax classification (CAMA), which is why its cropland total tracks the Census closely while the satellite tends to run higher. Developed and open-water rows come only from the satellite. Where they disagree, no single number is “wrong” — they are measuring different things.
Irrigated land, three independent ways
17,646 USDA Census harvested irrigated cropland, 2022 | 24,434 DNRC mapped remote-sensed irrigated extent | 10,836 DOR assessed tax classification, 2026 |
The single most important acreage figure for a cattle operation, and the three sources genuinely differ. The Census counts acres actually irrigated and harvested in the census year; the Montana DOR figure is what is classified and taxed as irrigated; the DNRC mapping captures the full remote-sensed irrigated extent, including ground that carries irrigation but was idle or in another use that year — so it usually reads highest. We publish all three rather than pick one.
What each estimate means
- USDA Census of Agriculture — producer-reported, the official record. Highly credible, but taken every five years and suppressed in counties where a value would identify a single operation.
- Satellite (Cropland Data Layer) — USDA’s annual, wall-to-wall satellite classification. Complete county coverage every year, but it infers crops from imagery, so it mislabels some ground and over-calls hay and forage on native range.
- Tax / assessment — Montana Department of Revenue parcel-level classification from the CAMA assessment roll (2026 tax year), aggregated from the Montana State Library cadastral. Parcel- and ownership-based; a land classification, not an annual crop report.
Sources: USDA NASS Census of Agriculture 2022 (Quick Stats); USDA Cropland Data Layer 2023 (CropScape zonal statistics, USDA-NASS); Montana Department of Revenue CAMA assessment acreage via the MSDI cadastral parcels layer (tax year 2026); Montana DNRC Statewide Irrigation dataset. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.
Local Help
Verified contacts and official destinations for Glacier County — not a directory dump, just where to actually call
Extension, USDA, market, brand and diagnostic links go to the official Montana source; the DNRC office and phone are the specific regional office serving this county. Provider directories (veterinarians, feed dealers) will be added only once a repeatable verification standard is in place. Prepared by Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI.
Production & Sales
Operation character, hay base, and how cattle reach market from Glacier County.
Cattle production
Glacier County supports a mix of cow-calf operations on the Blackfeet Reservation and private ranch land east of the Front. Calves typically wean in October and move to feed yards in Nebraska and Colorado. USFS and BLM allotments on the Front provide summer grazing from late June through September for operators based near Browning and East Glacier. Ranch units tend to run 100–500 head, with tribal operations averaging larger. Yearling stocker programs are less common here than in the Milk River corridor to the east.
Hay & winter feed
Native grass hay and irrigated grass hay from Two Medicine River bottom ground form the primary winter feed base. Cutting typically begins in early July with a single cutting common in drier years. Alfalfa is limited by late frost risk near Browning. The 2025 season outlook depends on Two Medicine snowpack and June precipitation. [draft — verify against current conditions]
Logistics · sale barns & trucking
Cut Bank (US-2) is the primary shipping point, with Shelby (I-15 / US-2 junction) offering interstate access for trucking to Billings or Missoula feeders. The nearest major sale barn is in Havre, roughly 90 miles east on US-2. Fall run shipping typically peaks in October before early winter closes mountain passes. Rail access at Shelby provides an alternative for large consignments moving to Midwest feed yards.
Licensed Processing Plants
No federally inspected or state-inspected processing plant currently operates in Glacier County — the nearest licensed plants are listed below
Meat from federally inspected and state-inspected plants can be sold; custom-exempt plants are not listed here. Verified August 2026 against the USDA FSIS Meat, Poultry & Egg Product Inspection Directory and the Montana Department of Livestock state plant list (Jan 2026). Grants of inspection change — call before you haul.
Glacier County — 2023 Cattle Movement
Source: Montana Department of Livestock, BE-10 brand inspections. Released to Honest Cattle under public-records request. BE-10 inspections are recorded at change of ownership or interstate movement, so totals reflect transactions, not the standing herd.
Top destinations outside Montana
| State | Head | Share of county total |
|---|---|---|
| Nebraska | 2,804 | 6.7% |
| Wyoming | 2,514 | 6% |
| Washington | 1,728 | 4.1% |
| Minnesota | 1,172 | 2.8% |
| South Dakota | 980 | 2.3% |
When Glacier County cattle moved in 2023
Notes: A single animal can be inspected more than once in a year if it changes hands or moves across state lines twice; destination is the buyer's state of record, which is usually but not always the final feedlot. Inspection county = where the inspection took place (often an auction yard or shipping point), not necessarily where the cattle were raised. Data covers cattle only (BE-10) and excludes horse and bison inspections.