Top 10 Twin Falls Stories of 2013

This was the 23rd anniversary of the South Hills Lights. They were first displayed on November 24, 1990.

The Rock Creek General Store in Hansen was the new location of the famous South Hills Lights. You could walk or drive through the famous lights, see the same displays that you saw in the South Hills and even feed Bull the camel.

The Beaver Creek Fire was burning near the Wood River Valley and was approaching homes near Hailey and Ketchum. As of August 14th, the fire was estimated to be around 40,000 acres.

The fire was fully contained on September 3rd after burning 170 square miles, destroying one home, and threatening hundreds of others.

On November 7th, Jackie posed this question: "Did you watch the CMA’s last night? More importantly… did you see Tim McGraw’s pants?"

Things have never been the same since.

2013 saw the tragic death of 27 year old Chasity Pearson of Wendell in a fatal car accident in Jerome County. Her two passengers, a 2 year old boy and a 4 year old girl were both injured in the crash. Police say the girl was airlifted to Boise while the boy was taken by ground ambulance to the Jerome hospital for treatment.

Our prayers are with the family.

On December 2nd, Rescuers were searching for a small aircraft with five people aboard that was missing and believed presumably crashed in the Idaho wilderness near Yellow Pine.

On December 17th the search was called off for the missing plane, but the family of the missing passengers vowed to continue the search.

In one of the stranger stories of 2013, Tami Erin--the former child actress who played 'Pippi Longstocking' in the 1988 movie “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking”--came out with a sex tape.

She claims she didn't know it was being filmed, but the angles and lighting are just too good. Um... not that we have seen it.

December snow brought school closures to the Magic Valley and readers flocked to this page in droves (as did hopeful students).

In May we took all of your nominations for the 2013 Magic Valley Teacher of the Year and with a select panel of judges, narrowed the list down to the top 10. It was up to you to vote and select the 2013 Magic Valley Teacher of the Year!

Ultimately you chose Scott Burton from Jerome High School as the 2013 Magic Valley Teacher of the Year. Congrats Scott!

We learned in August that we may be losing a part of our American and Twin Falls heritage: our two drive-in movie theaters. The motion picture industry was switching to a new digital delivery method and not all theaters could afford the new projectors. Honda launched a national campaign to save the drive-ins by asking for votes and awarding 10 brand new, state of the art digital projectors.

Neither of Twin Falls' drive-in theaters, the Motor-Vu or the Grand-Vu, won a projector from Honda. Their fates are still uncertain at this point. Did we watch our last drive-in movie in 2013?

In late October, Facebook was overrun by... giraffes? It was the social media craze called the "Giraffe Challenge." Started by a New Zealand man, the challenge was to answer a simple riddle. If you got it right, nothing happened. If you got it wrong... you had to change your profile picture to that of a giraffe.

In October there were a lot of giraffe pics on Facebook.