South Dakota is Open for Business…but not today:
Today, Gov. Kristi Noem ordered all state government executive branch offices statewide to be closed Tuesday, Dec. 13, because of the winter storm expected in South Dakota.
The National Weather Service forecast calls for freezing rain, heavy snow, and high winds to occur throughout South Dakota. Travel will be impacted in those areas.
Officials continue to closely monitor the storm. A decision on state government office availability for Wednesday will be made Tuesday.
Citizens should be prepared to stay home Tuesday if possible. If they must travel, they should check sd511.org or the SD511 mobile app [Office of the Governor, press release, 2022.12.12].
Noem isn’t ordering any businesses to close, but she’s telling shoppers to stay home, and she’ll probably close the Interstates today, putting a serious crimp in economic activity and our Freedom.
Blizzards kill only a few hundred people a year in the United States, fewer than coronavirus killed in the U.S. yesterday.
Blizzards probably have a 99.9999% survivability rate. Why does the governor shutdown the state for something that hardly ever kills?
Many, if not most, of these Republican slackers take advantage of the dynasty trust industry and flee the frozen tundra in their RVs ahead of consecutive six-month winters and strings of below-zero days. Ash and soot from wildfires in the Siberian taiga are accelerating the loss of Arctic sea ice driving more frequent and deeper polar vortexes. With some prayers the Yellowstone supervolcano will finally put South Dakota out of its misery.
Cory, Covid is ok now, it’s just killing Republicans. Did I just type that? My bad.
College was always good when a blizzard shut it down. We had a wagon and the liquor store was always open in Vermillion. A good day of Risk and Monopoly. I’m sure it’s the same in Pierre.
Mark, noy only was the liquor store always open, it was out the door in the alley and across the street. Char Bar seldom closed for a blizzard either. That’s where I learned that a good brandy is ignitable.
Cattle, deer, antelope, turkeys, pheasants . . . this storm may clobber those populations.
Noem ordered blizzard to lay off the state bird or else.
I wonder if a single precaution was made for livestock or if we are going to end up with a bunch of deadstock after the storm like every other weather extreme we have ample warning beforehand. Like when we had weeks of notice before the heatwave hit last summer and not one thing was done to prevent cooking thousands of animals alive that were trapped in a field with not a single tree or dugout for relief. Nobody giving them a douse of water to cool them down. The folks raising those animals got paid almost double what they were worth at market to sit on their fat behinds and cash government checks. Heck, the government is still giving them an extended period to claim losses. Plus, they get the dead carcasses picked up for free.
It is the job of any caregiver to keep livestock alive. Bulldoze a windbreak at least. Stack bales for a shelter. There is no reason we have to go collect dead animals except, of course, they are worth more letting them succumb to laziness of their owners and are far less work to get paid double for dead ones than ones you have to raise and sell.
https://kbhbradio.com/news/ranchers-farmers-have-another-opportunity-to-apply-for-disaster-or-pandemic-aid
Not weather related, but Cherokee and Buena Vista counties in iowa have new bird flu cases affecting 50k turkeys in each county. iowa has list 15 million poultry this year.
I’ll continue to trash her for covid, but not this. The roads are baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
The Weather Service just announced a major ice storm is hitting my home town of Elkton: power out, lines down, trees breaking. So, by being a permanent disaster area it makes Mrs. Noem look justified when she asks Uncle Joe for another bailout.
Is the weather bad enuf to ground the State plane, or does Kristi have an important meeting in Florida? ;-)
I-90 is closed from Wyoming to Chamberlain; DOT is telling westbound truckers they should wait in Mitchell or Sioux Falls, since truck parking in Chamberlain is tight!
Dicta captures the grounds for complaint here: if South Dakota had taken the pandemic as seriously as it takes snowstorms, coronavirus would have sickened and killed fewer people.
Getting covid shots is as sensible as carrying a shovel and a sandbag in your trunk.
Governor Noem has shut down state offices in 5/6 SD counties for a second day.
I had COVID for the first time, last weekend. Sore throat Friday morning. A cough Saturday morning. Tested positive twice Saturday afternoon. Fever and chills at the same time Saturday overnight. Starting feeling good again Sunday afternoon. Felt 100% Monday morning. My two vaccine doses and three boosters resulted in a mild case. No Paxlovid. (MAGA’s say, “That 30% more unvaccinated people have died is just a coincidence.”) 😂😂😂
Why were you not wearing a mask and washing your hands, Ms. P.h? These days, catching the Covid Bug is a behavioral choice, like the sex diseases that run rampant in places they don’t “mask” up because of poverty.
This seems to be a NDS issue, this closing the offices. I don’t think the offices are closed, as I had to call two of them. In one the fellow was just working at home, like during the Covid Bug Breakouts, and the other the young lady was actually in the office.
grudznichts knows less about epidemiology than she knows about why gravy’s taste good.
But, she’ll find out soon enough. Don’t die, you old turd.
Grudznick…yes, a lot of state employees in Pierre will be working on the “blizzard day”. Pierre is a small town. A fella can bundle up, put on their Sorrels and hike to work in twenty minutes from about anywhere in the city. When the fella gets there he can get some work done because A. the phone is not ringing B. The Boss is not calling a meeting about the important meeting that is coming up C. there are no meetings D. there are no birthday or retirement parties E. No citizen is dropping by to sit at your desk and complain about gas taxes or deer hunting regulation, which is not your department. F. The guy who likes to talk to you all day about football is staying home. G. Your fellow employee, afflicted with “learned helplessness” will not be begging you to drop everything and help him with a project. H. there’s plenty of coffee.
hahaha
Mr. Blundt, you make it sound like a working fellow’s paradise. Perhaps Ms. Noem should consider more snow days.
Arlo is correct. The work ethic in Pierre among state employees is strong. They might take a few hours of that time off to clear the sidewalks, but they will get there and put in some time working. Where I worked, we were dependent on UPS delivery. If they weren’t delivering or were late, we had to find other mundane tasks to do. Labeling test tubes was the most boring job you can imagine.
What is Mrs. Noem good at besides fattening her war chest and that other thing?
You know Richard Schriever, an old bartender buddy of mine invented a drink he called the Flaming Nuclear Waste. It was great until a customer caught his hair on fire. This was in Rapid not Vermillion of course.
Mark, a fellow from Aberdeen I knew in my Vermillion days invented a drink called a “Good Night Irene.” I once had 3, then it was indeed “good night.” But I was not in Irene.
I also learned of the efficacy of snowshoe grog in my Vermillion Days. it is amazing how comfortable a deep snowbank can be as a place to rest – at least for a while – on the walk/stagger home from somewhere.
Instead of empowering communities to harvest snow melt and rain water rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need. For every 1” of rain or snow water equivalent and 1,000 square feet of surface (roof, driveway, etc), about 620 gallons of fresh water are generated.
A contributor at the Aberdeen American News Faceberg page wants to melt snow, put the water in a pipeline and pump it to the Southwest.
Good idea but it’s not new. In 2011 an interested party wondered whether compressing snow into ice and loading it onto flat rail cars might work. The capacity of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River is 27,000,000 acre-feet.
Lake Kampeska, Lake Poinsett, Lake Mitchell, Lake Thompson and other non-meandered bodies of water will continue to suffer the effects of human-caused climate distortions but disaster declarations are how Republicans who preach small gubmint fund crumbling infrastructure in red states. Recall Rep. Kristi Noem repeatedly voted against disaster aid after Hurricane Sandy and other climate related catastrophes but she doesn’t respect self-reliance because she’s wedded to moral hazard.
As ice floes bash moorings and flooding causes the scouring of fill from river bottoms the disasters befalling the Missouri basin should be a stern warning to erstwhile pipeline operators: it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.