Updated Saturday at 12:35 a.m. URBANA – Meteorologists issued several tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings on Friday evening. An approaching cold front and warm moist air clashed, spawning severe weather in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky late Friday. There are early reports of damage in the Illinois towns of Windsor and Gays in Moultrie County…
URBANA – U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm stopped in Urbana on Thursday as part of her two-day tour of Illinois energy facilities. She listened carefully as researchers at the university’s Integrated Bioprocessing Research Laboratory described how they turn sugar cane into fuel. “What today is about is seeing what the opportunities are and building…
DANVILLE – About 30 people attended a public meeting in Danville on Thursday afternoon to hear plans to clean up three coal ash sites. Texas-based Vistra Energy took over control of the old Dynegy site in 2018 following a corporate merger. Dynegy closed its coal-fired power plant along the Middlefork River back in 2011 leaving…
ROLLA, Mo. — Chris Brundick looks at a few inches of water running through a low lying strip of land on his 450 acres in south central Missouri and sees a ditch. “This is hardly a creek, and this, in my opinion, should not be classified as a Water of the U.S.,” Brundick said. The…
CHAMPAIGN — Do you know what’s in your drinking water? Depending on where you live, you could be ingesting contaminants linked to cancer, brain damage and other serious health effects. That’s why scientists at the Environmental Working Group developed the Tap Water Database – a searchable tool, based on zip code, that tells you what…
GIBSON CITY – In August, nine inches of rain dumped on one of Randy Aberle’s fields of corn and soybeans near Gibson City, Illinois. “We had some areas in those fields that the water was four feet deep,” he says. Luckily, he says, those fields have enough slope that the water drained off within a…
CHAMPAIGN — Sunlight and water power two new buses in the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District fleet. Champaign-Urbana is one of the first transit agencies in the country to adopt zero-emissions, hydrogen buses. “I’ve always been a big science fiction fan,” said the district’s managing director, Karl Gnadt. “Now, this isn’t quite Star Trek-level technology. But…
A century ago, people throughout the Midwest could hear the high-pitched staccato call of the ivory-billed woodpecker echoing in old-growth forests throughout the Mississippi River basin, from Montana to Louisiana. Now that call has been permanently silenced. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently declared 23 species, including birds, freshwater mussels and a flower, extinct….
When it rains on a farm here in central Illinois, the water that runs off into local streams and rivers carries with it excess nutrients leftover from fertilizer. Those nutrients eventually flow into the Mississippi River and, ultimately, into the Gulf of Mexico. And while you can’t see them with the naked eye, those nutrients…
MAHOMET — The Champaign County Forest Preserve District has chosen a new executive director. Lorrie Pearson will begin her new role on September 27th. She comes to the forest preserve district from the City of Urbana, where she most recently served as community development services director. Listen to the full interview here. Pearson replaces Mary…
Some Midwestern farmers are involved in a research project to help determine how good some practices are for the environment, and it may help them take advantage of new attempts to establish a carbon credit trade market. https://cpa.ds.npr.org/kcur2/audio/2021/09/CARBON-FEATURE-WEB.mp3 The project run by Missouri Corn Growers Association and Missouri Soybean Association is looking at quantifying the…
RAYMOND — A pig’s ideal temperature is 65 degrees Fahrenheit. So on a 90-degree day in the middle of July, Phil Borgic keeps a close eye on his herd. “A pig can’t sweat,” he says. “So the only way that it can transfer the heat is by panting.” https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s138/audio/2021/08/livestock-climate-change-hpm-web.mp3 The air is humid and heavy…
URBANA – Meteorologists say dangerous heat and possibly strong thunderstorms will continue in Central Illinois on Thursday. The National Weather Service in Lincoln has issued a Heat Advisory until 8:00 p.m. It is the third advisory this week. Forecasters also say there could be strong to severe thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, with the main…
People who work outside increasingly risk their income, illness and even death as climate change ramps up extreme heat. That’s according to a first-of-its-kind study from the Union of Concerned Scientists, titled “Too Hot To Work.” The study focused on workers who spend some or all of their work time outside, including construction workers, emergency…
URBANA – A nearly stationary line of heavy thunderstorms brought flooding Thursday to the uppermost part of the Sangamon River Valley in Champaign, Ford and McLean Counties. Meteorologist Andrew Pritchard estimates that six to nine inches of rain fell in those counties, from early Thursday morning into the afternoon. He blamed the flooding on…