New heat map reveals Missoula’s hot spots 6%
By Ellis Juhlin5%
8/3/2026, 1:36:14 PM
Topics: Heat Islands, Climate Adaptation, Environmental Justice, Community Initiatives, Government Funding
Keywords: Heat Map, Missoula, Climate Change, Heat Island Effect, Urban Heat Islands, Rural Heat Islands, Climate Smart Missoula, Capa Strategies, Alli Kane, Susan Teitelman, Extreme Heat, Community Resilience, Equity, Tree Planting, Data Center, Noaa, Inflation Reduction Act, Trump Administration, Funding
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Optimism Bias, and Sunk Cost Effect, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 9.8% saturation with 124 hits. Analysis detected 934 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,265 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 16% and a BS Rank of 6% (25,858 of 27,408 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.30% of the article peer group.
Twenty degrees.
That’s about how much temperatures differed in the same town, on the same day, at the same time last summer.
A new heat map of Missoula County pinpoints the places lacking things like greenspace or shade structures, and can be significantly warmer than areas with more trees or water resources.
It’s a phenomenon called the “heat island effect,” and is well studied in urban areas.
A research review by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency found that urban heat islands average 1-7 degrees hotter than places with more greenspace and shade within the same city.
But that research has been lacking for rural areas.
It’s why nonprofit Climate Smart Missoula teamed up with the city and county in 2024 to apply for federal funding to create this heat map.
Last summer, teams of volunteers drove countywide transects with sensors recording second-by-second measurements of temperature and humidity.
Then analysts with the climate adaptation consulting firm CAPA Strategies turned the data into the now-publicly available Missoula County Heat Map.
Alli Kane, the county’s climate action program coordinator, says some of the results weren’t surprising.
“Places where we anticipated we would have heat islands were downtown Missoula, around Southgate Mall, those areas that are more urban and more built up,” she says.
And the heat map shows that trend.
Neighborhoods like the University District or the Rattlesnake, where large, mature trees provide shade were significantly cooler than the Northside or Westside.
Susan Teitelman with Climate Smart Missoula says this also correlates with heat islands observed in bigger urban areas.
A temperature and humidity sensor attached to a volunteer’s car during data collection last summer.
The sensor took measurements used to create Missoula County’s heat map.
Credit: Alli Kane
“What we’re seeing in Missoula mimics larger cities like New York and Boston,” Teitelman says.
“You see the same thing happening everywhere: poorer, hotter neighborhoods have fewer trees; wealthier, greener neighborhoods have lower temperatures.”
But there were surprises too, according to Kane, including how dry, brown open lands, like an empty lot in town, acted as heat islands.
“These are generally unmanaged and undeveloped spaces,” she says.
“Those lots tend to fill in really quickly with invasive species that are able to more quickly adapt to our increasingly hot and dry conditions.
So when they’re not watered, when they’re not managed, when they’re not planted with native species, they act as heat islands here.”
Another surprise was seeing more heavily forested places hold onto heat overnight, such as in Seeley Lake and Evaro, Kane adds.
“You’ll see, especially in the morning map, they are retaining heat from the day before because of that really dense canopy, and so that effect is resulting in some of our highest-recorded morning temperatures.”
Missoula County’s average annual temperature is projected to increase by 4 or 5 degrees by 2050 .
And the area is already experiencing more days with temperatures over 90 F each year.
Agencies like the National Weather Service have consistently identified heat as the most deadly weather Americans experience.
Research from the University of Montana published in 2024 found that for every 1.8 F increased, 911 calls increased by one percent as well.
And those calls came from more rural areas with older, retired populations.
Although heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer, those deaths can be preventable with the right plans in place, Kane says, and it starts with awareness.
“Perfectly healthy individuals who do not have any disabilities and who make enough money to be able to afford air conditioning and cool, clean indoor air, and who are really connected to their community could still find themselves suffering from the effects of heat,” she says.
“Heat impacts everybody.”
Map of US Cities to receive funding for the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring in 2025.
Credit: NOAA, NIHHIS
It’s part of why the city, county and Climate Smart launched their campaign and action plan called Stay Cool Missoula to build community resilience for extreme heat.
That collaboration played a role in the county landing this grant funding.
The heat map is the first of its kind for Montana and throughout the Rockies.
“One of the reasons we have taken this on with such force,” Kane explains, “is because we’re not historically an area that has experienced a lot of extreme heat, and so we are not prepared … Most of our buildings do not have air conditioning or any sort of cooling infrastructure.”
Teitelman with Climate Smart Missoula points out that it’s critical to prepare communities for what is coming.
“Extreme heat is dangerous,” she says.
“It is impacting Missoula and Montana.
It’s impacting northern climates, and it’s an issue of equity.”
Teitelman leads Climate Smart’s efforts to plant trees in lower-income neighborhoods where tree cover is sparse or nonexistent.
She says having access to this heat map helps her target those planting efforts.
The map has been put to use in other ways too, like conversations around the proposed data center in Bonner on the banks of the Blackfoot River.
That project was ultimately canceled by the property manager.
But Kane says being able to showcase just how much warmer that area is, due to the amount of land cleared for industrial use, will help inform the county on future regulations and decision making.
Surface temperatures vary more than atmospheric air temperatures during the day, but they are generally similar at night.
The dips and spikes in surface temperatures over the pond area show how water maintains a nearly constant temperature day and night because it does not absorb the sun’s energy the same way as buildings and paved surfaces.
Parks, open land, and bodies of water can create cooler areas within a city.
Temperatures are typically lower at suburban-rural borders than in downtown areas.
Credit: EPA
Missoula was one of 11 communities funded to map heat islands in 2025, as part of broader NOAA heat-mapping efforts nationwide.
But the work almost didn’t happen.
Like many federally funded projects related to climate change, it was targeted by the Trump administration.
Kane, Teitelman and their other partners had been awarded this grant-funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring Program in 2024.
The money was part of then-President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The Trump administration then terminated the funding in May of 2025.
Some of the money was spent or allocated to partners before the grant’s cancellation, but Teitelman says it was a team effort to carry out the work after funds were rescinded.
Climate Smart, along with Missoula City and County had the staff to continue the work, but they also relied on free assistance from CAPA Strategies and other national collaborators.
“They’ve done all this pro bono work for our community and other communities,” Teitelman says.
“That’s just been a boon for us and communities across the U.S. who got to do this heat mapping in light of federal funding being revoked.”
Kane says the lack of funding doesn’t change the reality of a warming world.
“There has been so much disruption overturned because of what’s happening at the federal level,” she says.
“But I do think that our local governments and our local organizations are pretty uniquely positioned to continue to work on this, and so we’re putting everything we can behind it.”
This story is produced by Montana Free Press/Mountain Journal in collaboration with Grist as part of the Report for America Local News Initiative .
The post New heat map reveals Missoula’s hot spots appeared first on Montana Free Press .
Speakers
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81%flagged-word coverageSusan Teitelman
195 attributed words28% of attributed speech40% writer coverage
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