When you think about grass fires, it's usually a black patch here or there in your mind, a quick plume of smoke, and you're done. If you have a farmer or rancher friend, sit them down this weekend and as them what their experiences have been with grass fires. They will most likely have a very different interpretation. Especially if it involves dry conditions and high winds.

This past week a grass fire broke out near Lemmon, South Dakota. Lemmon is a little town of about 1200 located along the South Dakota-North Dakota Border. This week stole headlines of national media due to a Nightmare of a fire.

KX News reported;

"A huge, wind-fed grass fire Thursday afternoon near the South Dakota-North Dakota border not far from Lemmon, SD took the combined efforts of 22 fire departments in the two states nearly 8 hours just to get a foothold on the blaze."

It's been dry in the Lemmon area. Those dry conditions paired with winds blowing 25-30 MPH and gusting over 50 MPH made for insanely dangerous conditions. It's hard to fathom flames, up to 30 feet in the air on the prairies of South Dakota, but that's what firefighters discovered when they showed up. And they showed up!. Departments from all over. Volunteer departments from Lemmon, South Dakota, and numerous departments from North Dakota and Wyoming as well. When fires are blazing out of control, these tiny communities, rely on cooperation from local volunteers and often are assisted by first responders in nearby communities to help out as well.

As of Saturday morning, firefighters were still working on hotspots and thankful that the winds were subsiding and helping their efforts of getting ahead of the blaze.

We've heard reports of up to 20,000 acres being affected by the fire. Thank you for sharing this with your Facebook and Twitter friends.

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