Ravaging fires one day, a complete and total white-out the next. Ahh, Nebraska weather. I grew up in Sioux County, which is in the Panhandle of Nebraska. There, we have a long-standing history of surviving fire after fire (including the largest in Nebraska's history in 1989--couldn't find any links to sites about that one, sorry) and countless blizzards. But, I'm pretty sure this is one of the first (or at least one of the few) times my home area has had to endure both in a matter of two days.
Sunday, March 22 the temperature in Sioux County got all the way up to the mid-70s. That afternoon, there was a fire spotted on the Wood Reserve (between Fort Robinson State Park and my family's land) that ultimately burned between 155 and 160 acres. The thing about Panhandle fires is when they burn, they BURN! A LOT! Luckily, this one was stomped out before it could do any more damage.
You know what put out the fire? It wasn't the more than 13 firetrucks from Crawford, Harrison, Fort Robinson, Job Corp, Chadron or Hemingford. Nope, it was the blizzard that came the very next day. I'm not even kidding. By the end of the day Monday, March 23 most of both Sioux and Dawes Counties had an average of 10 inches of snow, causing many schools (including Chadron State College) to cancel classes, and my parents to leave work early just so they could get home...where they were then snowed in and have been for the last couple days. My family's ranch is still sporting eight-foot-tall snowdrifts, and I just learned that it is still snowing there.
All I can say is...Mother Nature must have been having one heck of a mood swing!
Interesting trivia on fire reporting - with wildland fires they are typically controlled or contained, but not put out. They either burn themselves our or get put out by rain or snow.
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