Polo, South Dakota

Matched 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.

• 1951 USGS Polo quadrangle1:24000
• 1953 USGS Huron quadrangle1:250000, 3 printings
• 1954 USGS Huron quadrangle1:250000
• 1985 USGS Highmore quadrangle1:100000, 3 printings

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 6 fires within 5 miles of Polo between 2000 and 2014, burning about 1,332 acres in total. None 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.

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Burdette
• Florence (historical)
• Miller Dale Colony

Every fire recorded in Hand County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Polo in 109 storm reports between 1996 and 2025: 63 hail, 21 thunderstorm wind, 11 flood, 8 tornado. The reports record 1 death. 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.

Every storm recorded in Hand County

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 1257169. 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.