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Paper short abstract

This paper examines vernacular weather and climate knowledge in Solčavsko, Slovenian Alps. Drawing on ethnography and oral histories, it explores how past weather narratives and practices are challenged by disrupted patterns, raising questions of memory, temporality, sensing, and climate change.

Paper long abstract

In August 2023, Slovenia experienced devastating floods that severely affected Alpine regions, including Solčavsko, a remote municipality in the country’s far north. The area is defined by high-pasture agriculture, forestry, (agri)tourism, and outdoor activities. After the initial fear for lives, homes, and possessions, the local community showed remarkable solidarity: collective efforts rebuilt critical infrastructure and addressed the economic losses caused by the collapse of tourism.

Yet the aftermath was not only about immediate recovery or future fragilities (Rubio 2024). The floods also gave an impetus to renewed reflection on vernacular weather knowledge, rooted in generational memory, oral histories, and embodied environmental experience. In a place where references to the past, and even to notions of timeless harmony between land(scape), non-humans, and human carers (farmers), remain central to local discourse (Bajič 2023), disrupted patterns have created new ambiguities. Weatherlore, seasonal knowledge, and the skilled, multisensory relations to the environment are at once valued and unsettled.

What is the practical and symbolic role of vernacular weather knowledge in times of disruption and irreversible change? How can one “read” the weather when the “language” of the environment itself is shifting? And how do narratives of past weather events – preserved in memory and oral traditions – shape present understandings of climate uncertainties?

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Solčavsko between 2020 and 2025, this paper examines local understandings of “traditional” weather and climate knowledge in the context of anthropogenic environmental transformation.