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Happy Sunday, Meridian!
Step outside this morning and you may want a second layer. We're looking at the upper 70s today, which is roughly twenty degrees off where this week started, and it is going to feel like somebody flipped a switch.
Friday night gave us actual football with actual scores — three of Meridian's four high schools won, and one of them beat another one of them. The Canyon County sheriff spent Friday firing off a very pointed email about the ramp closures you've been detouring around all weekend. There's an EP release party downtown-ish tonight, a card tournament this afternoon, and a wheelchair-ramp campaign with a Meridian angle.
Let's get into it.
In this issue
🏈 Rocky Mountain 35, Owyhee 0 — and Meridian High handled Borah
🚧 "Quite ridiculous and irresponsible": a sheriff vs. ITD over Ten Mile and Garrity
♿ Habitat wants to build 10 ramps — and the ride that funds them stages in Meridian
🎴 One Piece TCG on Fairview this afternoon, an EP launch on Ustick tonight
🎂 Cake at the Chamber on Sept. 9
🌤️ Upper 70s today, then back near 90 tomorrow
🧠 Trivia: Meridian has four public high schools. Which one is the newest — and what year did it open its doors?
(Answer at the bottom.)
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Today, Sunday, Aug. 30
One Piece TCG organized play, 2–6 p.m., Phoenix Fire Games, 94 E. Fairview Ave. $7 gets you three rounds of Swiss, a booster pack and an organized-play pack whether you win a single game or not. Bring your own deck. More packs on the line if you actually win. Add to calendar →
Afro Zaga EP release party, 8 p.m., The Dalton Royal, 3161 E. Ustick Rd. Ste 110, $10–$40. A live launch show at the tropical-themed spot up by Eagle and Ustick. We've had this venue on our list since early August and finally pinned down the street address, so here it is. Add to calendar →
Tuesday, Sept. 1
Kuna Trail Riders monthly meeting, 6–7 p.m., Idaho Pizza Company on E. Fairview Ave. Yes, the club is named for Kuna; the meeting is in Meridian, over pizza. If you ride the desert south of town and have ever wondered who maintains and advocates for those trails, this is the room. The listing says only "Idaho Pizza in Meridian" — we're naming the Fairview location because that's where this group has met before, but check the listing before you drive. Add to calendar →
Wednesday, Sept. 9
Ribbon cutting for IDeal, Idaho's 529 education savings program, 1–1:40 p.m., Meridian Chamber of Commerce, 215 E. Franklin Rd. It's the program's 25th year. There will be cake. Forty minutes, free, and a genuinely useful thing to ask questions about if you have a kid and a vague sense that you should have started saving already. Add to calendar →
Friday, Sept. 25
7th Annual Charity Golf Tournament presented by PetIQ, 9 a.m.–3 p.m., Lakeview Golf Club, 4200 W. Talamore Blvd. Hosted by The Animal Retreat. Seventh year, so they've got the format figured out. Add to calendar →
Saturday, Sept. 26
5th Annual First Responders Fundraiser, from 9 a.m., High Desert Harley-Davidson, 2310 E. Cinema Dr. Put on by the Veterans & Patriots Association, Chapter 43-1. The listing gives a start time and not much else — we're running it because the organizer and venue are both known quantities, but details are thin so far. Add to calendar →
Also today, and we ran the details on Friday so we won't repeat them: the Drivers 4 Hope charity car show is at Demeyer Furniture, 3530 E. Franklin Rd., 8 a.m. to noon. Kids pick Best of Show. And a date for the fridge — Monday, Oct. 5 is the Harvest Edition of the Meridian Monday Night Market at Storey Park, the last one of the season.
Skipped this week on geography, as usual: the West Bench Farmers Market, Boise Fall Festival, Kids Discovery Expo and Space Day are all Boise, whatever the Meridian calendar says. Know something happening in town that isn't on any calendar? Hit reply — that's how the best items in here get found.
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Sunday: the cooldown actually showed up
Upper 70s today, low around 56 tonight, sunny. That's a real drop — we were in the low 90s midweek. It's a jacket-in-the-morning, t-shirt-by-noon kind of Sunday, and about as pleasant as this valley gets in August.
Then it's over. Monday climbs back to around 89. Enjoy today for what it is.
Fine print, because we'd rather tell you than not: the National Weather Service's machine-readable Meridian file has been frozen since Aug. 23 — sixteen days of pulls, same timestamp — and it still says 87 for today. Three separate live reads off the Boise forecast strip all said 77. Boise normally runs a few degrees hotter than Meridian, not cooler, so a live Boise 77 against a stale Meridian 87 means the frozen file is running hot. We're publishing the live number. If you'd rather trust the official file, dress for something warmer than we're describing.
Meridian's high schools opened the season 3–1, and one of those losses was to another Meridian school
AI illustration — not a photo of Friday's games.
We flagged the openers in Friday's issue and promised we'd be back with results. Here they are, off the Idaho Press live scoreboard: Rocky Mountain 35, Owyhee 0. Meridian 35, Borah 13. Mountain View 44, Middleton 7. All three finals, all 6A.
The Rocky–Owyhee result is the one people will be talking about at church this morning, because it was two Meridian schools and it was a shutout. Elsewhere in the conference, Eagle beat Timberline 32–14 and Sandpoint edged Kuna 15–14 — a one-point loss is a rough way to start a season.
One note on sourcing, because this one nearly bit us: search results for "Rocky Mountain Owyhee" also surface an Idaho Press roundup with a very similar-looking score. That article is from October 2025 — a playoff game, a different result. The scoreboard below is the Aug. 28, 2026 one.
"Quite ridiculous and irresponsible": Canyon County's sheriff went after ITD over the ramp closures
AI illustration — not a photo of the Ten Mile ramp.
You've spent the weekend detouring around the closed westbound Ten Mile off-ramp. So has everyone in Nampa, around the closed westbound Garrity on-ramp. Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue found out about both the same way you probably did — a Facebook post Friday morning — and fired off an email to the Idaho Transportation Department saying so.
He says he called the Nampa and Meridian police chiefs to ask if either had been told. Neither had. His email asks whether anyone at ITD "understand[s] the enormity of the amount of traffic that will push to the city of Meridian and the city of Nampa," notes that his office and Nampa PD don't have the traffic-control resources to absorb it on a weekend's notice, and asks why one ramp couldn't have stayed open while the other was rebuilt.
ITD's response, given to CBS2: "We are not closing consecutive exits or consecutive on-ramps." One is an exit ramp, the other an on-ramp, and drivers can use the next available one either way. Both reopen at 5 a.m. Monday, which is to say tomorrow morning, which is to say this argument is about to become moot and then, presumably, get filed away for the next time.
Habitat wants to build ten wheelchair ramps this fall — and the motorcycle ride that pays for them stages in Meridian
AI illustration — a generic ramp, not one of Habitat's.
Treasure Valley Habitat for Humanity is running a September campaign called Ramp Up! — money for wheelchair ramps and other accessibility repairs at the homes of low-income owners across the valley. The goal is ten ramps for ten households. They've done 35 critical home repairs so far this year and have 21 people still waiting.
"Something as simple as a ramp can be the difference between aging safely and losing your home," said CEO Janessa Chastain, which is the whole argument in one sentence: a ramp is cheaper than the alternative, and the alternative is somebody leaving a house they own.
The Meridian hook: the Harley Ride for Habitat stages at High Desert Harley-Davidson, 2310 E. Cinema Dr., on Sept. 19, 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m. There's also a trivia night at Barbarian Brewing in Garden City on Sept. 30.
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Trivia answer
Meridian's newest high school is Owyhee High School, which opened in 2021 at 3650 N. Owyhee Storm Ave. It's the newest of the six high schools in the West Ada School District and it serves the far-western end of Ada County — parts of Meridian plus Star.
It opened with roughly 1,500 students, which is a full-sized high school arriving all at once rather than growing into itself, and it did not take long to make noise: the Storm won a state basketball title in their inaugural season. The colors are red, dark grey and white. The fight song is called "Mighty Owyhee" and is sung to the tune of "Mighty Oregon," which is either a nice piece of borrowing or a small betrayal depending on how you feel about the Ducks.
Yesterday's 35–0 result notwithstanding, a school that didn't exist five and a half years ago now plays 6A football in the Southern Idaho Conference. That's Meridian growth in one sentence.
Source: Owyhee High School entry, Wikipedia, citing the Idaho Commission for Libraries directory, West Ada School District and Idaho Press state-tournament coverage.
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