Last summer, many communities in our region saw record-breaking heat, putting residents, visitors, and workers at risk of heat-related illnesses.
In 2024, Grand Junction, Colorado, saw temperatures exceed 100 degrees as early as June. July was followed by six consecutive days of temperatures over 100, and August also saw records broken with several temperatures above 100.
Data collected by the city last summer showed a nearly 14-degree temperature difference between the hottest and coolest parts of the city. Officials say some of the hottest parts of town were the I-70 business loop and Highways 6 and 50, which have a lot of big box stores and car dealerships—places with lots of pavement and asphalt.
Tamra Allen, Grand Junction's Community Development Director, said the city wants to continue its data collection efforts this summer, with a focus on the public health impacts.
"We will be working on that data collection this summer, to further understand the relationship between extreme heat and those calls for service, and what we might be able to do to reduce those calls and that strain on our emergency service providers," she said.
Another big piece of Grand Junction's outreach has been to unhoused people, who are often the most vulnerable to extreme weather events, including heat. Allen said the city has had a resource center for about a year and a half for its unhoused population.
"We are working right now to find satellite locations for a more centralized resource station or resource center," she said. "(We) provide things like cooling internal to those buildings available to those vulnerable residents and then, also provide water and work with community members and organizations to ensure we have water stations in appropriate locations throughout our community as well."
In 2024, Moab, Utah, saw 115 days over 90 degrees and almost 50 over 100.
City officials are planning to use data collected this summer to create a heat map—including not just neighborhoods and downtown, but also popular trailheads and recreation areas.
Alexi Lamm, director of Strategic Initiatives and Sustainability for the city of Moab, said the city plans to really ramp its data collection around extreme heat this summer.
"Getting an actual heat map," she said, "And then also some ways that we can overlay that with our landscape and try to figure out what factors are influencing that and which places are better because they're wet or they're shaded, or worse because they are in other locations that may be very paved and giving off radiant heat from the urban heat kind of effects."
Moab had previously received a grant from the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring to do a lot of that data collection and mapping this summer in partnership with Science Moab, using federal funds and data from NOAA. The city learned earlier this month that the grant was terminated, because the program did not align with the Trump administration's priorities.
Despite the setback, Lamm said that through robust partnerships in town and citizen science initiatives, they'll likely still be able to complete aspects of their original project.
"It's engaging residents as volunteers to drive with a sensor on their car on a designated route," she said. "We're a relatively small place, so we are probably going to have maybe two or three routes. It won't be too much. And then driving those three times in one day in July to try to give us an idea of how the heat changes in the area and not just geographically, but also throughout the course of a day."
The town is also getting a stationary heat sensor that will take measurements, and officials are hoping to get a few more sensors for trailheads. Lamm said the high visitor population means their outreach on heat risks looks a little different.
"Our trail ambassadors, for example, have heat guns that they use to show people how hot sand gets for their dog's paws," she said. "Or the National Parks have people at trailheads sometimes to give extra information, and that educational piece becomes really important."
Lamm said Moab is also looking to collect more data about air quality, and how that connects with heat and other environmental phenomena.
"Air quality can be related to heat with ozone. It can also be related to forest fires or other smoky-type events that might be bringing smoke into our valley where it can settle," she said, adding that a lot of people in town use evaporative cooling in their homes. "So they're bringing in outside air to cool their houses, but they also—in some cases—could be bringing in dust and smoke."
Both cities say they've been working with communities in places like Arizona and Nevada to exchange ideas about adapting to heat, though Allen says there are certain things other places do that Grand Junction is not yet considering.
"We have not moved to a place where we're mandating less pavement, for example," she said. "Certainly other communities, I think, are headed in that direction. We have not yet moved in that direction and it's not currently part of a kind of a strategy approach for us."
Trees and the urban canopy as heat mitigation
Both Lamm and Allen say that trees present an opportunity for communities to invest in heat mitigation.
Tamra Allen says Grand Junction isn't just looking at the city's urban canopy, but the city is also encouraging private homeowners to plant trees. She says the city's urban forestry department has come up with a list of trees and plants that are suitable for their high desert climate. These trees are heat-tolerant and drought-resistant, which is super important in a place where water is scarce.
"We do think that there is a balance between planting trees and creating a cooler environment, which ultimately in many ways takes less water than to maintain other landscapes," she said. "It really is a more comfortable living environment for people. It also reduces energy usage."
Allen said she thinks that a little push and pull around water usage and the Grand Valley's arid landscape is to be expected, but the benefits of the urban canopy are clear.
"We are, I think, incredibly lucky that our community here, including both our city and our water conservancy district has fairly senior rights for water," she said. "And we also have areas of our community—in fact, very significant areas of our community—that are served by ditches out of our canal system, which is fairly unique in an urbanized environment."
Moab is also looking at where and how it plants trees and other kinds of plants, but not just in response to heat. City officials say monsoon storms have gotten much more severe in recent years, causing considerable flooding in town.
Lamm says strategically planting trees can also help with mitigating the impacts of flooding.
"Trees have roots that can help stabilize soils which helps us with erosion, other plants do as well," she said. "So looking at where we think that plants would be beneficial because they stabilize soils is important, and that plays into our stormwater management."
Lamm said trees provide other benefits, like improving air quality by keeping dust out of the air with their leaves, and also creating surfaces that absorb noise better than rocks, reducing noise pollution in areas like Moab that are surrounded by canyons.
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