Chelsea, South Dakota
8 topographic sheets cover this place, the earliest surveyed in 1899 and the latest in 1985. It stands in Union Township. It lies in ZIP code area 57465. It stands on Preachers Run. The Survey maps it on the Chelsea quadrangle. 19 people lived here at the 2020 count. It stands 1,352 feet above sea level.
Population over time
2 figuresChelsea fell from 27 to 19 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.
| Year | People | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 27 | |
| 2020 | 19 | -8 (-30%) |
Topographic sheets covering this place
5 surveys from 8 printed sheetsMatched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.
- 1899 USGS Northville quadrangle1:125000, 2 printings
- 1954 USGS Aberdeen quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
- 1956 USGS Aberdeen quadrangle1:250000
- 1966 USGS Chelsea quadrangle1:24000
- 1985 USGS Aberdeen quadrangle1:100000, 2 printings
Fires near this place
10 since 1999Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 10 fires within 5 miles of Chelsea between 1999 and 2017, burning about 143 acres in total. 3 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
| Reported cause | Fires |
|---|---|
| Equipment and vehicle use | 3 |
| Natural | 3 |
| Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 2 |
| Debris and open burning | 2 |
The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.
| Date | Cause | Size | Reported by | Name on the report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 September 2017 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 3.0 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | D HASELHORST FIRE 1 |
| 14 September 2017 | Natural | 10 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | D HASELHORST FIRE 2 |
| 13 September 2017 | Natural | 20 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | D HASELHORST FIRE 3 |
| 15 August 2011 | Missing data/not specified/undetermined | 2.0 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | 12562 |
| 12 August 2006 | Natural | 13 acres | Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge | SOUTH SCATTERWOOD |
| 21 July 2007 | Equipment and vehicle use | 50 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | not named |
| 21 July 2007 | Equipment and vehicle use | 10 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | not named |
| 20 July 2008 | Equipment and vehicle use | 1.0 acres | South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression | not named |
Storms near this place
31 since 1998Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Chelsea in 31 storm reports between 1998 and 2025: 18 hail, 11 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado, 1 funnel cloud. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.
| When | Event | Place named | Harm | What the report says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | Caller states that some shingles were blown from the roof. |
| July 2025 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | Thunderstorm winds estimated at 60 mph and large hail resulted in stripped siding and damage to surrounding crops. |
| May 2024 | Funnel Cloud | Chelsea | - | A trained spotter observed a funnel cloud west of Warner. |
| August 2022 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | An out building was blown through a windbreak and across the road, and another building had its north doors blown out by estimated 80 mph winds. |
| July 2020 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | Estimated seventy mph winds scattered several chemical bulk containers about the yard. |
| June 2018 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | An estimated eighty mph wind from a thunderstorm brought down a tree. Before the rain began, blowing dust occurred with the visibility down to an eighth of a mile. |
| July 2015 | Hail | Chelsea | - | A large area of crops were damaged from golf ball size hail. |
| July 2015 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | Sixty mph winds were estimated. |
| August 2012 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | A trained spotter estimated wind gusts of sixty mph. |
| August 2012 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | A trained spotter reported large tree branches down due to an estimated seventy mph winds. |
| May 2010 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | Seventy mph winds were estimated south of Chelsea. |
| July 1999 | Tornado (F1) | Chelsea | - | The tornado snapped large branches off a live oak and drove them into the ground. The tornado knocked down approximately 5 headstones in a small cemetery, and took a roof off a small outbuilding. It destroyed an empty grain bin, moved a grain auger 50 feet, took off several large doors on a machine shed. The tornado also knocked down or snapped off numerous large trees in shelter belts and destroyed a barn and several outbuildings just north of Chelsea. |
| July 1999 | Hail | Chelsea | - | Baseball sized hail broke the windshield on a pickup truck. |
| June 2025 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| June 2025 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2025 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| August 2022 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2020 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2020 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2020 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2015 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| May 2010 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| August 2007 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| April 2007 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| August 2007 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| June 2005 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| June 2005 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| May 2004 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 2004 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| June 2003 | Hail | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
| July 1998 | Thunderstorm Wind | Chelsea | - | no account filed |
Nearest settlements
The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.
Elsewhere
Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.
| Wikipedia article on Chelsea | An encyclopaedic summary. Its text is share-alike, so it is linked here rather than copied. |
| Wikidata item Q2296070 | The structured record the population and elevation above come from. Public domain (CC0). |
Provenance
This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 1254339. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.




