Burning in Bismarck

So when I woke up this morning and jumped on my computer, the first thing I noticed is that my weatherbug was flashing down in the corner, indicating some type of weather warning from the National Weather Service. I wonder if maybe it is fog, because we seem to get a lot of those warnings here, but then I realize that I can see the sun coming up and that's not the problem. That also eliminated rain/thunderstorms. Naturally I click on it to see what sort of weather-doom will befall me this day, and I see, "Fire Weather Warning in Effect", Friday morning until Friday night, Burleigh County. WHAT THE FRENCH, TOAST??? Having never seen this, I have no idea what it means. Does it mean that my county is on fire? That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense since the warning is 24 hours in advance. Does it mean that there is a fire headed this way and I must flee my home within the next 24 hours? Cause if so, holy crappers, where do I go? All I know is that the stupid little bug doesn't start blinking at me unless some bad shit is going to go down, and fire does not seem like something to mess with.

Upon further investigation, I see more description that talks about the heat and the relatively humidity (or lack thereof) in the grasslands. So now I'm wondering if there is something to do with it being so dry here and the wind blowing, that maybe grasslands build up electrical charge and somehow spontaneously combust and start fires to burn down Bismarck... do I live at the gates of Hell??? And if so, why wasn't I aware of this from national news prior to moving here. I mean, even the flooding in Fargo makes it outside the border, so surely spontaneous combustion torching the town would be newsworthy.

Well, I asked around at work, and apparently this is the same as the silly little signs that they put up around national forest warning of the fire danger level of the day based on the dryness. Because it is so dry, apparently we are supposed to be extra careful about throwing cigarette butts out the window. Also apparently sometimes these fires start along the railroad tracks because the train will throw sparks and ignite the grass nearby.

While spontaneous combustion seems a lot more exciting, I'm glad to know that it isn't likely I will wake up with flames outside my window tomorrow morning. I'm still confused as to why I have never seen this warning from my weather bug before.