[LAU] thunderstorm

[TheOther]

david wrote:
> I have a friend who owns a small farm in Illinois (6000 acres). A couple
> of times now, he's been out in the field working on or near large
> farming equipment when lightning struck. One time, he came to on the
> other side of the equipment from where'd he been working!
> 
> Hawaii's pretty tame on lightning ...
> 

Small farm....6000 acres of Illinois farmland... Boy *that* brought a 
smile to my face.

I'm now living in Champaign, Illinois, in the heart of Illinois 
farmland.  Very little livestock, most farmers are grain farmers.

It's the 6000 acres that made me smile.  Let's see, there's 640 acres 
to a section, and a section of land is 1 mile by 1 mile, or a 1 mile 
square.  6000 acres would be 9.375 square miles of some of the most 
prime farmland in the entire United States.  If all of his land was 
contiguous, he'd own something like 3 miles by 3 miles, and then some. 
  Land around here can sell for 25,000 USD per acre.  So he's got 
around $150,000,000 in land value alone.  I wouldn't call that a 
*small* farm, and I'm wondering what he's doing working it by himself!

Now when I spent some time in the cattle and sheep areas of North 
Dakota, 6000 acres would be just about right for a small ranch.  Slope 
county in North Dakota (western side, near the Montana border) was 40 
miles by 30 miles roughly, around 1,200 square miles.  There were 2 
towns in the entire county, one of around 200 people and the other 
around 125.  If you saw a tree, it was probably planted at a ranch 
house.  You won't see many trees or people in Slope county.  You can 
see some buffalo, though.

Best,
Stephen.