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Happy Monday, Meridian!
Ninety-five and hazy, and the smoke advisory that's been hanging over the valley is written to run out at 1 p.m. today — which is either good news or a coin flip, depending on what the wind does. Either way it's the mildest Monday we've had in about two weeks, and the numbers keep sliding all week.
Today's issue: a fire shut down a Meridian bar and grill on Sunday morning and it'll stay dark today, the DEQ advisory has a stated end time for the first time in a while, and Meridian High football has a new head coach with a plan and a Wing-T. Plus the Monday Night Market is at Storey Park tonight, and the honest truth about our events list this week. Let's get into it.
In this issue
🔥 A Sunday-morning fire closed The Curb Bar and Grill off Meridian Road — shut today too
😷 The DEQ smoke advisory is written to expire at 1 p.m. today. Open burning still isn't allowed
🏈 Meridian's Warriors have a new head coach, twelve returning starters and an opener on Aug 28
🌡️ Sunny, hot, high near 95, low around 61 — and the week walks downhill from here
🛍️ Market at Storey Park tonight, and an events list that leans late on purpose
🧠 Trivia: Meridian High School has won the state football championship three times. Name the years. (Answer at the bottom.)
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Straight with you: the next seven days are picked clean. Everything Meridian-located between now and the 17th has already run in a recent issue — the market tonight, Main Street Mix Wednesday, the book launch and the playdate Thursday, line dancing Friday, and the whole Aug 15 pile-up. Rather than serve you leftovers, this list starts a week out and runs to the end of the month. Everything below is in Meridian unless it says otherwise, and none of it has appeared here before.
Tonight, Monday Aug 10
The Meridian Monday Night Market is at Storey Park, 205 E. Franklin Rd., 4–9 p.m. We already ran it, so it isn't on the list — but it's there, it's free, and the shade is better than your driveway.
Monday, Aug 17
Meridian Monday Night Market — 4–9 p.m., Storey Park, 205 E. Franklin Rd. Same market, next week, and by then the evenings should actually be pleasant. Runs every Monday through Oct 5. Details · Add to calendar
Thursday, Aug 20
FREE Playdate at The Learning Experience — 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., 6241 N. Linder Rd. Free, indoors, air conditioned, and aimed at the under-five crowd. First one after school starts, which means the big kids are gone and the little ones get the run of it. Details · Add to calendar
Monday, Aug 24
Meridian Idaho Men's Bible Study — 6 p.m., 237 E. State Ave. Small, public, and posted with an actual address, which is more than most of the groups on the calendar manage. Details · Add to calendar
Thursday, Aug 27
The Beach Boys — 7:30 p.m., Ford Idaho Center Amphitheater, 16200 Idaho Center Blvd., Nampa. Not in Meridian, and we only make that drive for you when it's genuinely worth it. Sixty-plus years of a band that half this valley can sing from memory qualifies. Details · Add to calendar
Friday, Aug 28
Movie Night: The Princess Bride — 7:30 p.m., Victory Gardens, 120 E. Victory Rd. Outdoor movie, late August, a film nobody has ever complained about. Bring a chair. Details · Add to calendar
Saturday, Aug 29
Art Spark at Kleiner Park: A Community Art Party — 11 a.m.–7 p.m., Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park, 1900 N. Records Ave. Eight hours of making things outdoors with other people. Twenty-some folks already say they're going. Details · Add to calendar
And the one that isn't optional: West Ada's first day is Wednesday, Aug 12. Two more sleeps.
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☀️ Today: sunny and hot, high near 95, low around 61. The National Weather Service point forecast for Meridian has 96; the same-day NWS-sourced forecast CBS2 published yesterday morning has 95, with a northwest wind of 5 to 10 mph. Call it 95 and plan for the top end of it.
🌫️ Patchy smoke returns after 1 p.m. The morning is the clear part today, which is a reversal from most of last week. If you've got something outdoors to do, do it before lunch.
No heat advisory. Second straight day without one after that Thursday-to-Saturday stretch. Not nothing.
The air quality advisory has an end time. The Idaho DEQ advisory covering Ada and nine other counties is written to run until 1 p.m. today, with the AQI forecast at Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups. Story's below.
The week ahead: Tuesday 95, Wednesday 92, Thursday 90. By Wednesday's first bell it's merely hot rather than punishing, and after the last three weeks we'll take it.
Fine print for the honest: the NWS data feed we pull was last refreshed Thursday afternoon, so today's numbers were checked against CBS2's same-day forecast before they went in here. They agreed within a degree.
A fire closed The Curb yesterday morning. It stays closed today.
A fire broke out at The Curb Bar and Grill, off Meridian Road, on Sunday morning. PulsePoint has first responders dispatched around 10:40 a.m.
The restaurant posted on Facebook that it has to close temporarily, and led with the only part that actually matters: everyone is safe. "Thankfully, everyone is safe, and that is what matters most," the post said. The plan as of last night was closed Sunday and Monday while crews assess the damage.
The cause hasn't been released. Idaho News 6 says it has asked fire officials and is waiting on a response. So: if The Curb was your Monday, it isn't today. Check their page before you make the drive later in the week.
Idaho News 6, published Aug 9 at 6:02 p.m. MDT
The smoke advisory is written to run out at 1 this afternoon
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality's air quality advisory for wildfire smoke covers Ada, Adams, Boise, Canyon, Elmore, Gem, Owyhee, Payette, Valley and Washington counties, and the active product is written to run until 1 p.m. MDT Monday — this afternoon. The AQI forecast is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, which in plain terms means kids, older folks and anyone with asthma or a heart condition should keep the strenuous outdoor stuff short, and everyone else should not go set a personal record at 2 p.m.
Two things people get wrong about these. First, open burning is prohibited by air quality rule for the duration, regardless of what the fire restrictions say. Second, an advisory expiring is not the same as the smoke leaving — yesterday's forecast already had patchy smoke returning after 1 p.m. today, roughly the moment the advisory lapses. Watch the sky, not the calendar.
Two more sleeps until West Ada's first day, so this is also the week to figure out what your kid's school does about recess and outdoor PE on a smoky morning.
DEQ advisory text as carried live on the Idaho Press weather bulletin; forecast detail from CBS2, published Aug 9 at 4:30 a.m.
New coach, twelve starters back, and Meridian football wants its decade back
From 2021 to 2023 the Meridian Warriors went 26-9 with three playoff appearances and a run to the state title game. The two years since: five wins total, and a 2-7 finish last season that included a 41-0 loss to Mountain View to close it out.
Enter Kevin Hastin, the program's second head coach in as many years, over from Capital where he went 5-5 and made the playoffs last fall. His first move was staffing. "I have nine coaches in the building with great experience," he told the Idaho Press. "A lot of these assistants were part of '21, '22, '23 when Meridian was at the top." Twelve starters return — five on offense, seven on defense, including the team's two leading tacklers, senior linebacker Leo Klinger and senior defensive back Griffin Sanders.
He's bringing the Wing-T with him, which is a polite way of saying Meridian is going to run the ball at you with a lot of misdirection. "We're going to fake, we're going to pound the rock," Hastin said. He's still choosing between two quarterbacks, and senior receiver Jaxson Ocamica is the guy he's counting on to stretch the field. He is not asking for patience: "I don't think it's going to be a rebuild that takes two or three years."
Opener is Friday, Aug 28 vs. Borah at Dona Larsen Park, then Centennial at home Sept 4.
Idaho Press, published Aug 6
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Trivia answer
1986, 2005 and 2007.
Three state titles, and the gap between the second and third is only two seasons — Meridian was briefly one of the harder outs in Idaho. The more recent near-miss is the one people still bring up: the 2022 team that made the state championship game during that 26-9 run from 2021 to 2023.
Worth remembering that Meridian High has been steadily giving away its own talent pool for two decades. Every time West Ada opens a new high school on this side of the county — Mountain View, Rocky Mountain, Owyhee — the boundary moves and the Warriors hand over a few hundred students. Three titles across forty years starts to look different when the school keeps getting redrawn out from under the program.
How did we do today?
How did we do today?
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