Stay informed on fire restrictions

Heat. Heat. And more Heat. Welcome to summer in Wyoming!

While we love to complain about the cold in the winter, we’re also pretty vocal about the heat in the summer.

Unfortunately, while the summer sun is wonderful if you’re working on your tan, its not so wonderful for the grasses and such on the prairie.

We had such a beautiful, wet spring and everything grew like crazy, covering our red hills with lush grasses, but now, with the 90-degree plus temperatures we’ve been having, all that green has turned to brown, creating a highly dangerous fire element.

Both the Bureau of Land Management and the Hot Springs County Commissioners have implemented a county-wide fire ban, effective immediately. The BLM ban extends to Washakie and Big Horn Counties.

The specifics of the fire bans can be found on the front page this week, and we encourage you to look them over since there are a few things that are still allowed, like fires within designated fire rings and trash burning in the county with the proper precautions.

Not to worry, in a month or two those temperatures will start dropping again and we’ll be preparing the snow blower once again.