Montana has one of the most extreme climates in the country, with record-breaking temperature swings of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the course of a single day. In February of 2018, a blizzard sent three Indian reservations and two counties into a state of emergency. Twenty-foot snow driftsoffsite link pushed up against house doors, blocking those insideoffsite link from reaching food, water, and vital medical services. Although the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana was not one of the areas hit by this disaster, elders from the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes worry that extreme winter weather could threaten their own reservation in the future.
Throughout 2018, the National Weather Service’s Weather Forecast Office (WFO) in Glasgow, Montana, worked collaboratively with the Fort Peck tribal elders to help prepare their community for extreme weather and spark interest in meteorology among the younger generation. This collaboration is the result of several years of work establishing mutual trust and respect between the WFO and the reservation’s Tribal Elders Program.
Patrick Gilchrist, Glasgow WFO’s Warning Coordination Meteorologist, worked alongside the tribal emergency manager to increase the resiliency of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation to weather hazards. The WFO collaborated with the tribal elders to create extreme weather strategies, designing tornado and severe weather preparedness plans for the community. The Fort Peck Reservation established an emergency operations center, developed a system to monitor local weather conditions, and created a way to communicate weather information with their community, becoming the second NWS Storm-Ready® tribal nation in the country.
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