Pine Ridge has new weather station

PINE RIDGE—According to Reno Red Cloud, Director of the Oglala Sioux Tribe Water Resources Department, there will eventually be seven weather radar stations built over the next four years on the Pine Ridge Reservation, strategically located to cover every area from Prairie Wind Casino to the village of Allen. As of July 26, the first of the seven became operational, just a mile south of Prairie Wind Casino.

In an invitation to the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, Red Cloud wrote: “The installation of the weather station is being completed through a partnership between Oglala Sioux Tribe Water Resources Department, South Dakota State University (SDSU), and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Water Resources. The Oglala Mesonet station serves the people of the Oglala Sioux Tribe directly with live weather reports, available on the Mesonet website along with other useful resources like forecast and radar from the Weather Service. The station also provides critical data for the Tribe’s Water Resource Department. Additionally, Mesonet data feeds are used by numerous partners to improve weather and runoff forecasts, severe weather monitoring, drought monitoring and much more. The website also has a feature that translates the information into Lakota speech and text.”

In the past, tribal members had not had immediate, specific information about prevailing conditions, or a Pine Ridge specific forecast, especially concerning severe storms, including large hail or tornadoes, and the subsequent flooding.

“Back in fiscal year 2021,” Red Cloud told NSNT, “I proposed a project with the BIA for funding a weather station and I got awarded funding so I worked with South Dakota State University, Nathan Edwards (Mesonet Operations Manager Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering), we came together, and he said he could get the weather station done, so I contracted through him and he’s done weather stations with other tribes and I told him this would be our first one. We were thrilled about that because in this day and age of violent weather and climate change and heat and high winds and cold, the weather station was something the tribe might need for many years. The need for the weather station was always there, but now, it’s a reality.”

The weather station cost $27 thousand, and it is not a large building, just a small tower maybe 10-15 feet tall, and at top center is a small solar panel that supplies all the power for operation.

There is a website which receives data from the station.

“There’s a dashboard on it,” Red Cloud said, referring to the website, “Anybody can get on it. It takes you right to the weather station over there by Prairie Wind Casino. The station is very useful, not only for our everyday tribal members, but it can be used by schools, tribal programs; it functions just like a National Weather Service weather station, but it’s a tribal one. The most exciting thing about it is it is ours, and it can be used as a management tool for water resources for droughts, and for schools for forecasting the weather, like snow.”

Red Cloud explained that many functions on Pine Ridge require certain types of weather, and now the tribe has ready access to weather information that will help these functions to be planned successfully.

Once the other six weather stations are up and operational, Red Cloud said their individual coverage area should be large enough to connect comprehensively, and specific areas of the reservation will have their specific weather readings, but all the stations can be combined to give an overall picture of weather conditions every few hours.

“Just the other day,” Red Cloud said, “we had that severe thunderstorm, coming down from Custer to Pine Ridge, and I went to the website and I could see (the conditions)”

Red Cloud said that other weather station radar systems are linked to Pine Ridge now and it’s an easy click at the website to get a comprehensive picture of weather across the state. He said you can also click on weather stations at Rosebud, or other places, and get the up-to-date weather conditions for that specific place.

“It’s a good tool,” Red Cloud said, “to upgrade our technology in the 21^st Century for our tribe.”

The website address is SD Mesonet (sdstate.edu). The website will offer a Lakota language option.

Dashboard at the website.

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

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