Forty acres of standing corn and more than 100 acres of corn and bean stubble were burned in two separate fires Friday evening.
The Groton Fire Department was called about 10 p.m. to assist in a fire in that started in a cornfield near Verdon, Groton Fire Chief Dion Bahr said.
That was under control in about an hour, but they barely finished the mop up work, before the departments were called to a second fire southwest of Groton, Bahr said.
"It was a challenge going right from one fire to another," Bahr said.
Bahr said the fire spread extremely quickly because of the wind and burned more than 100 acres of bean stubble and corn stubble before it was brought under control about 2 a.m.
He said he has been a member of the fire department for 12 years and had not seen a fire spread so quickly that late since the Timber River bottom fire eight years ago.
The sustained windspeed in Groton was about 24 mph at 11 p.m., with gusts of wind that hit 34 mph, said meteorologist Aaron Dorn of the National Weather Service in Aberdeen.
Firefighters from the Warner Fire Department, Stratford Fire Department and the fire station in Bath were called in to assist fighting the fire.
No structures were damaged; firefighters managed to contain the fire before it jumped a road, Bahr said. If the fire jumped the road, it could have spread to the farm, which was about a quarter-mile away, he said.
Most of the firefighters were extremely tired and didn't get back home until 3:30 a.m., Bahr said.
"It's been a really long week," Bahr said.
This was the second fire that lasted past midnight this week. Firefighters from Groton, Bath and Aberdeen rural put out a fire that destroyed a barn and a semi, which started at 11 p.m. Wednesday night and lasted until 6 a.m. Thursday morning.