Q2 Billings Area Weather: Still hot and smoky Friday with isolated thunderstorms

A strong ridge of high pressure continues to dominate the weather of Montana and Wyoming, which allowed a few highs to flirt with records on Thursday. We also have some high-altitude smoke moving into our sky. Although air quality has gone down a little, most of the smoke will stay at higher altitudes at this point.

High pressure will remain in control of our weather, but a few showers and thunderstorms will form over the mountains Friday afternoon, and will move out over lower elevations by early evening. We'll be slightly cooler Friday, but it will stay quite hot, and very few of us will have a chance for measurable rain to end the week.

A small trough of low pressure will move over southern Canada Sunday and early Monday, but we'll likely only have a minor cooling of our weather along with some breezes and isolated mountain showers and thunderstorms. The ridge will rebound over the Rockies for most of next week, which means we'll stay in the 90s and 100s.