The county is addressing our tumbleweed problem

[oldandslow]

  They have a crew of four out working, two raking them out of the fences along the road and two stuffing them in a wood chipper. It is going to take a loooong time time to get 'um all ground up. Clean up this section of road today, winds tomorrow, and the problem recreates it's self. These guys should have a job into next summer just raking and grinding tumbleweeds.

[Dee]

Burning would be cheaper, but this time of year you might burn every ranch in hundred mile circle.

[oldandslow]

Ungrazed pastures around here can have grass knee high. I have weeds on my little piece of heaven that are taller than I am. No fire, not even a spark, please.

[Dee]

We had a big fire last week south of Skellytown. They evacuated the whole town, but it got one house, and an out building. That was the day we had 70mph winds.

[oldandslow]

We have had couple of grassfires this year but both were on days with not much wind and were quickly snuffed. Our fire departments in the county have finally learned they can't stop a wildfire in high wind and just get in front of it and protect homes and other structures. They also put out the call to the three counties around us for help if it is a big one and they always are when the wind is high. If they can protect buildings the grass will always grow back eventually and we have a big fire break called Texas on our east side. It is mostly farm land with nothing to burn in fire season.

I had one get me in '98 before when the fire department was still chasing them. I was lucky and it split for some reason and went on both sides of my house and barns. A couple of corner post was my only loss and they are steel now. Until you have been in the middle of a 70 mph grass fire you really can't imagine just how bad they are or how fast they move. NO fun at all. I have also had one hit the road about 250 yards south of me but the fire department was sitting waiting and oil field water haulers already had both side of the road wet down as far as their bars would reach so it didn't cross the road. There was another that roared by about a 1/4 of a mile north of me with nothing stopping it. I keep a very close eye out to the general direction of west on windy days.

[Dee]

Yeah, there's no stopping a wild fire, just get out front, and try to make it go around.

[oldandslow]

When my first great grand daughter was in the process of being born it was on a very windy afternoon with a grassfire in progress coming from the west. Momma had to go south to the hospital and made it by by the skin of her teeth before the road was closed. Grandma and I weren't far behind but it was too far and the detour took us over 50 miles to get to the hospital that was about 8 miles south. It was a 4 lane highway and the fire jumped it like it wasn't even there.

The girl is almost 14 now and turning into a beautiful young woman so everything turned out OK.

[Dee]

Range fires are common in this area. There is  no direction you can go from my house that you don't see a burn from this year.
We had a wet spring, but we're at about 70 days now without rain.

[oldandslow]

We were up to 55 days and we had some drizzle. The weather station 18 miles north recorded .12" and since then it has been nothing. Aside from our drizzle I think the whole south plains- panhandle area is experiencing the same extended dry spell. It does make conditions good for the cotton farmers though.

[Dee]

Cotton is all in the gins here. Wheat is planted, but it ain't going well for the dry land farmers.

[Bob Riebe]

That is one of the nicer things about living in the non-forest area of Minn. such spreading fires are rare; although about fifteen years ago, with the rich yuppies building houses north of the Twin Cities in the scrub brush and trees area, one dude, in a very dry year, decided to burn his scrap pile.

He found out the hard way that that brush and scrub trees, when dry, burn like kindling to the cost of a few million in expensive yuppie homes.

[Dee]

Range fires here are fairly common in the dry season, but the fire fighting folks have a pretty good idea of what to do.

The skellytown fire was uncontrollable because of the 70mph winds.
All they could do was evacuate the little  community, set a few back fires, and try to keep it out of the little community.

It's one of those little communities in the middle of nowhere that boasts about 400 souls, and is 20 miles from any large town.