Authorities in Kansas reported several people with minor injuries after storms passed through on Monday. Three people were left with minor injuries in rural Franklin County, about 50 miles southwest of Kansas City.
These sagebrush-covered foothills of primarily Bureau of Land Management land have a higher concentration of sage grouse than anywhere else on the planet, likely in part because the birds have room to move. More than a thousand elk winter there, too, sustained by the high-elevation landscape's cured grasses, dried wildflowers and shrubs. So do pronghorn and mule deer, wintering or using the area as a stopover on their journeys, which include the longest documented mule deer and pronghorn migrations in the Lower 48.
Profitability in the cattle business often hinges on understanding the real cost of production, something that can be difficult to pin down when labour, land, and opportunity costs aren't always clearly accounted for.
At least eight people have been killed as tornadoes lash the states of Michigan and Oklahoma in the central United States, with authorities warning that more storms are expected. Authorities on Saturday said that four people were killed in southern Michigan and four in Oklahoma, though the death toll could still rise as rescue workers assess the damage.
Although Kansas has no active volcanoes, the region marks the southern reach of the Midcontinent Rift System, a massive tectonic event that nearly split North America apart in Earth's distant past. When magma forced its way through the crust during that period, it left behind hardened igneous rock and deep fractures that remain buried thousands of feet underground.