From Sideways Snow To 80 Degrees In Wyoming

Wyoming can give you sunshine, ice, and sideways snow in the same breath and lately it feels like the wind never stops. We kick things off by breaking down the latest Wyoming weather whiplash: brutal gusts, a sudden cold snap, icy roads, and then a forecast that swings right back toward 70 and even 80 degrees. If you live here, you know it’s not just small talk, it changes how you travel, work, and plan your week.

Then we zoom out to what’s happening around us, including Nebraska wildfires tearing through dry grassland under low humidity and high wind. When you hear how much land is burning and how hard it is to stop, it puts our own conditions in a new light, especially for anyone watching fire risk in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. We ask the plain question a lot of folks are thinking: when does this pattern ease up and when do we finally get calm, soaking moisture?

From there, we turn to Wyoming sports as winter wraps up and spring sports begin. We talk state basketball, track, soccer, and what participation could look like in the next decade as activities compete for the same students. We also dig into the money side of youth sports, the pressure parents feel, and how pay-to-play tournaments and big facilities can shift the whole point of athletics away from teamwork and life lessons.

We close with two stories that stick with you: a WWII-era account of Myrtle Forney stepping into railroad work traditionally held by men and earning equal pay, plus a thoughtful look at the Bighorn Medicine Wheel and the Four Directions and what it teaches about balance and the circle of life. If any of these topics hit home, subscribe, share the show, and leave a review. What are you seeing in your corner of Wyoming right now?

Transcript

Welcome And What’s Ahead

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Good morning and welcome to Let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be continuing that look at our wacky Wyoming weather. We'll talk about sports and maybe where it's heading here in the state of Wyoming. I wonder your thoughts. Also, we'll be looking at a young woman that got into the man's world. And also we'll talk about the medicine wheel and the meaning it has. Thanks for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the show. Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 16th day of March. I was talking last week about our crazy weather. It's gotten crazier here in the state of Wyoming. Wind, of course, has been our number one nemesis. We've had unbelievable wind coming through this state. I've never seen anything like it. Last week we went from high temperatures, warm to a lot of wind and warm. On Sunday, we took and had a complete turn overnight, Saturday night, I should say. Suddenly, I don't know where here came this storm and the wind's blowing, and it snowed sideways, and it was just absolutely terrible outside. We've got snow, we had ice, we had cold temperatures that got down about nine degrees at my house here in Hot Springs County. Sunday morning there were only five people in church. The roads were ice and it was terrible. They talk about the people who were coming back from Casper, for you people that know Wyoming, coming back from the state basketball tournament. The people that were heading anywhere were stuck in this storm. The roads just went bad. It was really tough travel, and I can only imagine what these bus drivers were facing. You know, they talked about on Saturday about the high wind warnings or even buses out on the interstate, how bad it's gotten. But it was cold all day yesterday. Shoveled snow. Had to find my snow shovel and got it rounded up and moved snow. And now here, starting tomorrow, we're supposed to hit 70 later in the week in the 80s. And at the same time, you look around the country and over in Hawaii, they are getting drenched with rain here in western Nebraska, down to the southeast of us here in Wyoming. Nebraska is burning up. They're having these grassland fires that are just out of control. Over 600,000 acres on the last count that I saw. And they're starting to get alerted in Colorado, in the area that I saw. It could get into Wyoming, into that southeastern part of Wyoming. It is just bone-dry, and it's the winds are going to be up, and with these warm temperatures, there's no humidity at all. I I don't know. This is bivocal. Something's going down with the way our weather's been happening. I just don't understand how we're going to come out of this. Now, with that ground out in the in Nebraska in those sand hills, that's a big area that cattle graze. With all that grass disappearing, it's going to be a while before anything comes back up. Of course, you've got to have some moisture to get the grass back up. There hasn't been any moisture to speak up. And they had the fires in Oklahoma here recently and just across the country. And call yesterday with a person from Michigan. They were talking about their weather. They've had every type of weather imaginable. And here we are. We're only in the middle of March. Our weather goes from one swing to the other. So I don't know. It's going to be an interesting next couple of months to see where this all levels out. But I'm just totally worried about those fires in Nebraska and how you're going to get them stopped. With wind blowing, there's so much fuel in that country. When will it stop? And when will this weather start straightening up where we actually get some rains and some calm weather? But pretty crazy here in the state of Wyoming. In Wyoming sports, we talked about last week about the state basketball tournaments. They finished up with the 3A, 4A state tournament down in Casper last weekend. And so now it's on to the spring sports. And as I always say, the spring sports will probably get a lot of weather now. You start doing these outdoor activities, track and soccer are the two big ones in our area. Most of the smaller schools is track, but uh in some of the 3A schools you'll see uh soccer, and even some of them have softball now. So it's an interesting uh happening. I I kind of wonder sometimes about sports here in the state, maybe across the country, the more I start looking at what's happened here in our state, it seems like the girls' basketball numbers are starting to go down because of the competition with girls' wrestling. It is kind of decimating some of these sports. And I don't know, it somewhere along the line, I think we're about ready to lose sports. We have so many things going on. There are so many positive things with these high school sports, and sometimes they get uh overlooked and maybe people getting involved that aren't very good at at what they're doing. Um starting to use these kids. They in Casper right now they have the new sports ranch. Yeah, big place, big conglomerate built that, and I was talking to a gentleman about that, and he said um they had gone to some games there, and it was twenty dollars a person to get into for youth uh tournaments, youth basketball tournament, twenty dollars a person to get in the building. And so I've started watching quite a bit of stuff online and and on YouTube and stuff about this youth sports, what's going on. I think that's part of the issue we're kind of running into. We're pushing these kids, these parents are are spending all this money to try to turn their kids into the next superstar, the next athlete, and we are robbing a lot of these kids, uh maybe overdoing it with the kids, but it's all about money and the amount of money that this uh youth sports stuff is taking over the country, and it's a multi-billion dollar industry, and it happens in basketball, soccer, baseball, you name the sport, they have it. But the sports ranch, uh it looks like a good place, but when you start really looking at it, it's just a place to make a lot of money and just more money off parents. They'll have a lot of these tournaments, they'll have a lot of clinics and different things, and they can't do that for nothing, I realize. But they're out to get that dollar from these parents. So, sports, I don't know. Here in the state of Wyoming, I wonder where we're gonna be in ten years with some of our high school sports. Where does it all end and where do we just get back to getting the kids involved, being competitive, teaching competition? But this idea of every kid's gonna be a superstar, people are losing track of what high school sports are about. It's really an opportunity for these young people to work together as a team, learn a little bit about life. There's so many valuable lessons in this that when we start taking them trying to turn these all these kids into superstars, uh, start taking them traveling, doing too much, we're burning these kids out, and then they lose interest, and then we have nobody going out for sports. So it's gonna be an interesting time across the state. It's happening here in our state of Wyoming, it's not quite as bad as it is in some of our adjoining states, but it's something we need to keep an eye on for these young people that are facing a lot of distractions in their lives, but this is kind of adding to that uh issue. But high school sports, basketball's over with. Let's get into the spring sports and let her know. Today in our history section, I'd like to share a story from whyohistory.org. A woman's place was on the railroad Myrtle Forney in World War II, Wyoming. In July of 2024, Sally Meeker sat down at the Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne to share her mother's story as part of the Life Between the Rails and Oral History of the Union Pacific Railroad. The project was conducted by the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Myrtle Ruth Mason was born in 1924 near Elgin, Nebraska, the second oldest of eleven children. Growing up on the farm, she was a tomboy, running, climbing, playing baseball and basketball. She told me she was half court in bloomers. At 511, Myrtle stood tall among her peers. When the family moved to Texas in 1938, 14-year-old Myrtle adapted to yet another change. Within five years she was working at Western Union in Waco, earning twenty dollars a week and three promotions. After she heard that there might be work in Omaha where her father had gone, she took the train north. But there was no Western Union job waiting for her. Sally read from her mother's unpublished memoirs during the interview, sharing Myrtle's own words about what happened next. After finding a place to stay by babysitting and fixing breakfast for a family, Myrtle discovered something in the newspaper, the opportunity to attend a free telegraphy school for a three-month course to prepare for being a telegraph operator for the Union Pacific Railroad. After just two months of classes, the instructor called for volunteers. Three women were needed to staff Sherman Station, just south of Ames Monument, the highest point of the Union Pacific Railroad. Myrtle wrote, I jumped at the chance to start at the top. Sherman Station, located between Cheyenne and Laramie, set at an elevation of 8,247 feet. The context was crucial. It was World War II, and the men were at war, Sally explained. Otherwise, they would have been covering that job. Women stepped up to fill positions traditionally held by men. What made this significant, Sally noted, was that Myrtle received a man's salary. She commented several times through her autobiography that she was making equal pay with a man at the time. But what awaited Myrtle at Sherman was a shock. We had outdoor privy, coal stoves for heat, and cooking, bathing in old wash tubs, and carrying water from an outside pump across the tracks, Myrtle wrote. A section man and his school teacher wife lived in the awaiting room. And to hand orders lived in the waiting room, and to the hand orders to train crews, Myrtle had to walk right through their bedroom. The work was relentless. Seven days a week, groceries ordered from the company store in Omaha. Business was very heavy because of World War II, Myrtle noted. Sally remembered her mother talking about bright spots. The train crew was so friendly, and they would throw off chocolates, and the troop trains came through and all the troops would hoop and holler. After two years at Sherman, Myrtle bid for a Union Pacific job in Laramie. There she met George Washington Peterson, a UP Yardmaster who had started with the railroad as a callboy in 1936. Three months later we were married, Myrtle wrote. I have many interesting stories to tell of my three years career in the railroad, which led to the best 19 years of my life. George died young, just forty-eight from a heart attack. Myrtle later remarried and became Myrtle Forney, living into her nineties. Reflecting on Myrtle's experience, Sally said, My mother had the opportunity to do a job that men normally do, and really being an environment that gave her the opportunity to be a strong woman, but still a woman. In 1924, the year of Sally's interview, Myrtle would have turned 100. A fitting time to remember the woman who answered the call when their country needed them most, earning equal pay and proving that they could handle any challenge that Ray Robe threw at them. What a story, what an interesting story of the time and place in our country. Back in that era around World War II, everybody stepped up and did what they needed to do. And finally today, a story from Legends of America by Kathy Alexander. The Medicine Wheel and the Four Directions. And the Medicine Wheel sits approximately seventy miles to the north of us here in Hot Springs County. Been there a few times, and after reading this and thinking about it, I need to make another trip up this summer. Native Americans have a deep connection to nature that is referenced in their efforts to establish and maintain balance, health, and wellness. Nature is called Mother Earth because of its significance. It has been adapted into numerous customs and tradition. One example of this concept is a medicine wheel, which symbolically represents perfection and the circle of life. Most medicine wheels, also called sacred hoops, have four common compass points, each with a guiding spirit. These points symbolize the four stages of life and offer lessons and gifts that support the development of a balanced life. The four points may also have an animal, plant, celestial, and other representations which differ greatly from tribe to tribe. For example, the buffalo that appears on the medicine wheel of the Plains Indians is not represented on the wheels of the Southeastern tribes, as that animal was rare among them. And an alligator would not appear on the medicine wheel of the northern tribes. Number four is sacred to many Native American tribes, as it represents the four seasons, the four human needs, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, the four kingdoms, animal, mineral, plant, and human, and the four sacred medicines sweetgrass, tobacco, cedar, and sage. The medicine wheel can take many different forms in various types of artwork, where it can be a physical construction on the land. For thousands of years, the medicine wheel has been built on native lands in North America. One of the most notable is the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming. For centuries, the sacred site has been used by Crow youth for fasting and vision quests and by other Native Americans as a site to offer thanks and many prayers. The medicine wheel was named by white men who discovered it at the end of the eighteen hundreds. The most southern and one of the largest in existence, this wheel is said to serve as a landmark identifying the sunrise of summer solstice. In its most simplistic definition, the medicine wheel is a symbol of all creation, of all races of people, birds, fish, animals, trees, and stones. Its shape is that of a wagon wheel made of stones. According to tribal beliefs, the circular shape of the wheel represents the earth, the sun, the moon, and the cycles of life, the seasons and day to night. Movement around the perimeter of a medicine wheel is clockwise, following Earth's rotation. At the center of the wheel, at the hub is the Creator, who sits in perfect balance. Outside the center is an inner circle representing the old woman, or the earth. Father, Son, Grandmother, Moon, and four elements. Four distinct rock mounds set in the four directions lay on the perimeter, separated by stones, representing the moon's cycles. Stones laid from the perimeter in straight lines to the center, wheel spoke, represent spiritual paths, leading us to the center. Perfect balance to the Creator. It was made a natural historical site in 1996. Several other stone medicine wheels are scattered across the plains of Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, and northern United States. The Great Spirit of Light come to me out of the east with the power of the rising sun. Let there be light in my words and light on the path that I walk. But remember always that you give the gift of a new day. Never let me be burdened with sorrow by not starting over again. Great spirit of love, come to me with the power of the north. Make me courageous when the cold winds fall upon me. I was hoping you could give me strength and endurance for everything harsh, hurting and making me squint. Let me move through life ready to take what comes from the north. Great life giving spirit, I face west, the direction of the sundown. Let me remember every day that the moment will come when the sun goes down. Never let me forget that I must fade into you. Give me a beautiful color, a great sky for setting, so I can come with glory when it is my time to meet you. The great spirit of creation, send me the warm and soothing winds from the south. Comfort me and caress me when I am tired and cold. Unfold me like the gentle breezes that unfold the leaves on the trees. As you give your warmth, moving wind to all the earth, give to me so that I may grow close to you in warmth. Man did not create the web of life, but he has a strand in it. Whatever man does to the web, he does to himself. And if you really start studying this traditions of the Native American, it is rather intriguing. Again, a must see for this summer here in the state of Wyoming. Thanks for joining us today, and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the West, we ride for the brand, and we ride for Wyoming.