In recent months, southeastern Utah has been devastated by a quick succession of natural disasters.
"Most recently," said Jamie Harvey, San Juan County Commissioner, "we've had plenty of exercise with emergency management and emergency incidences, especially with the fire this summer. Then the floods actually came, and we've now had two occasions where we had to evacuate community members in Montezuma Creek and Bluff.”
The Babylon Fire burned more than 100,000 acres near Monticello this July. Then in October, massive floods damaged transportation and drinking water infrastructure throughout the Navajo Nation. San Juan County is still in a state of emergency.
Harvey said that in the past, the nearest weather station to get forecasts that are essential for emergency response were in Grand Junction, Colorado. That’s more than 150 miles away as the crow flies.
“We really never had actual live, in-the-moment local weather data. It was always projections,” he said.
But in October, a new weather station opened in Monument Valley. It is equipped to measure temperature, humidity, precipitation, solar radiation, evapotranspiration, air pressure, and a host of other metrics in real time. This is data that can provide early warnings of extreme weather events, but also guide farmers, ranchers, and other land managers in their decisions on a daily basis.
“Farmers will have some good readings about rainfall now." Harvey said that data will be especially useful to farmers in the hot, dry conditions of the Navajo Nation, which sometimes only receives six inches of precipitation.
Harvey sees the new weather station as a parallel tool to help strengthen local communities, alongside traditional knowledge. As a Navajo, or Diné, man, he grew up with the teachings of ancestors who were able to interpret subtle changes in the environment.
"You know watching the moon and how it's how it's forming this evening or the sun and whether or not it's reflecting anything in the sky, a lot of us take even that for granted,” Harvey said, recalling the teachings of his grandmother.
As a child herding sheep and goats, Harvey was taught that careful observation can tell you what to expect from the weather. While he said that some of that knowledge has been lost, there is a growing enthusiasm for traditional wisdom and environmental stewardship on the Navajo Nation.
“We can take pride in who we are, because we were smart," Harvey said. "We've lived for so many thousands of years. We were here, and we had that knowledge. It's a piece of our history, it's a piece of our wisdom that that we should return to.”
And with a weather station, or traditional knowledge, the principles in focus remain the same: stewarding the land and supporting a people that has existed here for time immemorial.
