Missoula, MT

Image courtesy Alli Kane

The City of Missoula, Climate Smart Missoula, and Missoula County collaborated with the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring and CAPA Strategies to organize a one-day mobile mapping (“Heat Watch”) campaign in August of 2025. This heat campaign built on previous work on the “Stay Cool Missoula” campaign to build climate resilience in Missoula.

To prepare for the campaign, organizers held events to recruit volunteers and raise awareness about community science and extreme heat. Organizers also hired a part-time Volunteer Coordinator to ensure timely and effective communication with volunteers, which proved especially helpful when unpredictable weather forecasts resulted in multiple rounds of rescheduling for the campaign date. When termination of federal funding in May 2025 abrupted reduced the availability of financial support for the project, the partners worked together to locate funds to support a Volunteer Coordinator as planned.

Despite these challenges, on August 12, 2025, over 35 community scientists worked together to collect over 75,000 measurements of air temperature and relative humidity across 92.8 square miles in Missoula County. A summary report that includes heat maps and information on data collection is being finalized and will be shared with community members in spring 2026.