A Tall order..Is SD the ONE..horses..hunting... (tornado, best)

[Sage44]

UNCLEHARLEY_ Thanks for your tips, it is an important factor to pick the right weather, that is for sure. Got to be able to make a living. But it sounds as though most is not too threatning out that way. Good idea though about location and road closure, one doesn't think about that too much. But to get in the rural area would mean less maintained roads. Truthfully an acre would probably suffice, just enough for a horse or two and we will buy feed at the store

rjl78- is there low humidity in the SE as well? Ice storms..hmm only experienced one of those in Texas back in 2003, was wicked! They can be pretty bad from my understanding. Do most folks have generators? How about storm shelters, do you get many Tornados? Here in TX we have a "season" for them may-june.

NO8FANN-wow your weather sounds real rough there.....NOT!!! No humidity, what a nice concept!

Seems most are pointing me to the hills, so I will be checking out that area most, I will check with the chambers and see what kind of info I can get from them as well.

Hows the drinking water out there? We have to buy bottled water here.

Anyone got kids in pre-K or Kindergarten? Would love to hear about the schools. The school here in this small town is scary, teachers do not pay much attention to the kids, there is 20 to a class and two teachers per room and yet in pre-K last year one kid broke his collar bone out in the playground, climbing on something he shouldn't and no one saw him. And my daughter managed to get her hair cut by two kids in the class..have scissors unsupervised???? Needless to say I was peeved!

[Sage44]

HI there to you BSW- Yes do tell about health care , I guess that is also important, is there a ER in Town, Major hospital, lots of clinics with good doctors?? We are 26 miles from the closest ER, our doctors are far and few we have mostly NP's or PA's, in Oregon my PA was amazing...but here well I will just say that they all must drink the polluted water...

Great news on the stores!! YAY!!
Thanks for the newspaper info.

[rjl78]

Pierre and points east are usually humid. Winter time it was bitter cold too. Brookings, while its a nice town, in the winter time is about the coldest place, maybe its Watertown. At least with the hills there is some shelter

[BusySocialWorker]

Rapid City has the major hospital in the Western part of SD and WY - Rapid City Regional Hospital

Regional also owns the small hospitals around the hills such as Spearfish, Deadwood, Custer, Sturgis etc.

Some GREAT doctors and specialists around as well - recruiting health care providers has been a priority of Regional and it has paid off

Our water here is actually really good! We have a water softener and filtration system in our house, but the water is not bad at all!

Having lived both East River and West - the weather is SO much better in the West - very low humidity (leading to very low populations of pesky bugs) - much warmer winters, and snow melts instead of sticking around

[rjl78]

RC Regional Hospital is top notch. The cancer center is outstanding. Excellent care and great physicians. Patient care is better than Mayo Clinic. Granted Mayo is at the cutting edge of medicine.

[ElkHunter]

I lost my father in Regional. But hey, they did the best that they could. He was 92 years young. He had the best healthcare anybody could provide. He just gave up.

[Sage44]

Thats too bad elkhunter!! I lost my Mom in Oregon..I still think they gave her too many meds, she couldn't fight all doped up....
Besides they first diagnosed her pancreatic cancer as an ULCER!! 3 months later they determined it was cancer..already progressed...

[Sage44]

ok, Now lets talk about food...specifically fish...we here in TX have two choices of fish in the market..Catfish and Tilapia sometimes, like 3 times a year they get shark steak in. I LOVE fish!! And am depressed to find such a limited supply here, of course the fishing here is mostly crappie,catfish and bass..I get excited when we get a bass!
Would love to find halibut,trout, and salmon in the store!
Even fish for trout!

What about Sushi?? yes gotta have my sushi fix ever so often..anything like that around? Japanese type places to eat.

[AJTucson]

Busy, thanks so much, I really appreciate it a lot. I just looked at the website - 20 RN positions - so excited. I know I'll have a few more questions - I'll be sure to ask (we are coming for a visit soon - bringing the old resume along).

Sage, thanks for letting me ask a bunch of questions on your thread. If I tried that here in my state, OMG - the responses would be beyond inappropriate.

I am going to stay tuned for more water info, as I had the question myself.

We are going to visit soon - so I am sure I will get a thread going as I will have 100 more questions once I've seen the state again.

Anyway to help you out a bit, we got a ton of info from the Chamber. My husband, I think, got info online and they sent us a lot in the mail as well. It covers a lot. I can tell that you are planning on sending for it. From and out-of-stater - I can promise you won't be disappointed.

[Jammie]

Just to answer one of your unanswered questions~eastern South Dakota is in tornado alley. West River doesn't have a huge tornado problem.

Just wanted to let you know~over here we had "Tornado Tuesday". It should be online somewhere and you may enjoy reading it. We had something like 69 tornadoes in less then a day. They keep the records on 24 hour intervals so we didn't get the championship even though ours happened in a shorter amount of time. Guess what state we're tied with~Yup, Texas. But I believe you do get more tornadoes down there and they are generally stronger then here. A Cat 5 does happen, but it's quite rare.

Storm shelters~some people have basements. There are also tornado shelters in our cities so you could call the emergency management director when you get there and find out where your nearest shelter is located. OR maybe someone here knows their locations. I'd find out and then make the trip a couple of times just to get familiar with it so you can drive right to it if the sirens blow.

And about the snowfall, I just checked. RC gets 36.9 inches per year and Sx. Falls gets 40.4 per year~both averages. The avg. low for RC is 12.4 and the avg. low for Sx. Falls is 4. The big difference is that Rapid City could have a snowstorm and warm up to 40 or 50 degrees in a day or two and over this way, that same snowfall could lay there for weeks or even months.