It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, May 27th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Fifth-generation Wyoming rancher Trenton Thornock pitched a huge 1.2 gigawatt data center on family land to a skeptical Evanston crowd on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the project is facing a rising tide of opposition against data centers locally and across Wyoming.
“Prometheus Hyper Scale, unlike a lot of the other data centers, you know, they have made that public commitment to community engagement, and so what this meeting was all about was answering the public's questions here in Evanston, it was at times an emotional meeting, a little unruly at times. There were some people in the audience, who just yelled out questions whenever, who would challenge answers and basically say ‘You're lying!’ There was one person who accused Trenton Fornock of being a sellout because he lives in Texas right now. For the most part, though, it was a pretty civil meeting.”
Thornock says he started his company in 2020 with the idea of first innovating water cooling systems and doing things in a more sustainable way and second impr oving the economy of his home state. Wyoming has struggled with outmigration of its youth, losing most of them by age 30 to other states.
Read the full story HERE.
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A fire tore through an under-construction apartment building in north Cheyenne on Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that one witness says the burning was so intense, the building was “a total loss” in minutes.
“He said within 10, 15 to 20 minutes it went from just seeing some flames to pretty much being a total loss, and it had been collapsing on itself. While it was burning, they could hear explosions coming from inside the building. Being under construction, there's all kinds of tanks and things with whether you're welding or paint or anything like that. So, whatever they had in there, he said they could hear it popping off.”
The under construction building is in the Ridgeview Apartments located at 2025 E. Carlson St. just off Converse Avenue between Sam’s Club to the south and Storey Boulevard to the north.
Read the full story HERE.
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State Rep. Mike Yin argued against a proposal by Chuck Gray to ban political party changes after Jan. 1st in election years. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Yin wants to know why Gray is making it harder for people. Gray says it’s an election integrity issue.
“So, what the committee majority, not Mike Yin and not a few others, decided was they're going to ask staff to draft a bill that is going to ban party changes for like three quarters, nearly three quarters of an election year, and so they did that. So now staff is going to build that draft, and then at a later meeting of the committee, probably September, people can come and comment, and they'll decide at that point or later whether they want to adopt the bill, which would give it an edge going into the 2027 lawmaking session, if they do.”
The Legislature in 2023 passed a bill banning voters from switching parties between about mid-May and the primary election in mid-August of each election year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Two hikers on a multi-day excursion were helicoptered to safety by Teton County Search and Rescue after becoming ill on Monday. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that one rescuer says, “It sounded like they weren't prepared to hit as much snow as they did in the high country.
“In this case, it wasn't a lack of experience or preparedness. The group knew that they were going to be encountering snow in high elevation on the Teton Crest Trail, and planned to be there for several days, but there was more snow than they anticipated, and they didn't find water to replenish their stores, because getting water off of smelting snow pack is not a bad way to work around carrying water on a trail like that, but in this case, there was a lot of snow, and not a lot of readily available water.
At one point, the hikers even tried to boil snow to get water, but the National Weather Service says that one inch of liquid water is equivalent to 12 inches of snow, and even though they tried, they just didn't have enough to hydrate all four of them.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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After losing both of her siblings to a male grizzly’s attack last spring and then splitting from her mother at an unusually tender age, the young grizzly named Miracle hadn’t been seen this spring. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that all changed when the bear showed up at Colter Bay on Sunday.
“That's almost the exact same spot she was seen almost in exactly a year earlier, and I talked to a bear biologist up in British Columbia, who, who said, yeah, that tracks, because, especially with female bears, they'll establish a range and they'll establish routes to get around, and the person who took the video said it really seemed like she was, she was coming from from one wooded area, trying to get to another wooded area, in other words, she wasn't interested in hanging out in Colter Bay. She was just making that her route through, and the biologist said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”
Wildlife photographer Marcela Herdova tells Cowboy State Daily that the 2.5-year-old Miracle appears to be in good health.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Casper man who admitted being a serial arsonist and starting numerous fires got 6-12 years in prison Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that Dallas Smith sought probation instead of prison time, but the judge wasn’t having it.
“He apologized for his actions, said that he knew that he caused some people some financial pain, and he had said in an affidavit that he had started the fires to get rid of the pain. So he asked the judge, and his defense attorney asked the judge if he could get probation and serve time at a place in Sheridan, and the judge was not going to go along with that. She said, "First degree arson, we're not going to do any probation with that.”
Natrona County District Court Judge Kerri Johnson sentenced Smith to the six to 12 years, and he was sentenced to time served 270 days for three other counts of arson that were part of the plea deal.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming biologists say a wolverine that had a rare close-range encounter with a hiker in the Wind River Range mountains is the same animal they’ve been tracking for more than a year. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that the animal has a huge range, being tracked over 200 square miles.
“That's typical for wolverine range, 200 or even more. They are wide-ranging animals. The running joke, or the way I put it is, even a lot of wolverines isn't a lot of wolverines, because they are very typical, very typically solitary animals that have gigantic ranges and just don't have much to do with each other, so they're, they're not, it's not like elk, they're very widely dispersed animals, so it makes sense.”
The wolverine that Zachary Shifrel photographed from about 20 yards away is a mature, 28-pound male, who was collared back in 2025, so say biologists Dean Clause and Rusty Kaiser.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming meteorologist Don Day is skeptical about a popular weather forecasting website’s prediction of a wetter-than-normal summer. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Day says Wyoming is a huge state for this kind of forecast.
“The website Open Snow published their summer 2026 forecast in terms of temperature and rainfall, and they have above average or above normal rainfall for the entirety of Wyoming and portions of 12 other states. So I spoke with Cowboy State meteorologist Don Day about that. First off, he was skeptical because it's open snow. He said that they can be very ambitious with long-range weather modeling.”
Day tells Cowboy State Daily that Wyoming isn't a one size fits all state, so even if some places do see above normal precipitation for summer, that doesn't mean it's a blanket statement that's going to cover every spot in the Cowboy State.
Read the full story HERE.
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
