South Dakota counties suffering fire risk in January

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will be in the high and very high categories again Sunday and Monday for much of the horrible red state of South Dakota.

I mean, like most people in this country, growing up, I really had little or no contact with the prairie because it was gone. I mean, I grew up in Michigan, I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, and the prairie was something I read about in books like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but not something that I had experienced. So it was only when I started exploring the prairie that was left and understanding what we had lost that inspired me to write, not only about agriculture, but about what we were losing by expanding agriculture in the Midwest. So you can sell a piece of land that has been plowed for much higher price than you can sell it if it hasn't been plowed. So prairies are vanishing largely due to commercial agriculture replacing grasslands with monoculture crops. But all of the outdoors is under threat, either from agriculture or development or from pollution, and the way to really protect all of them is for people to get outside and understand what they have and what they can do to stop whatever destruction is going on. [Sea of Grass and the Disappearing Prairie]

This interested party gets the feeling that Pat Powers has never stepped foot on the prairie and knows less about it than every Earth hating Republican running for office in South Dakota.