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Wildfire smoke is pouring into the Midwest from Canada as dozens of fires burn north of the border. Let's get you caught up on all the latest information: Where Is The Biggest Risk Right Now? Since the upper Midwest is closest to the fires burning in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, upper-level winds are blowing the thick smoke southward. This has prompted air quality alerts for the entire state of Wisconsin on Friday, as well as parts of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota. (MORE: Here's What Wildfire Smoke Does To Your Body) Chicago residents could also experience degraded air quality as...

Violent storms ripped across the South and Midwest Wednesday, producing dozens of tornadoes and severe thunderstorm warnings in parts of Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Indiana.

How long can a region project normalcy while its leadership writes policy in a fantasy dialect? By any honest reckoning, the American Midwest has long stood as the republic’s last great firewall of common sense -- where decency is currency and a handshake still means something. But lately, the region’s governors have sounded less like the voice of the plowman and more like the echo of a faculty lounge panel at Oberlin. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, the executive mansions seem to have been annexed by ideology, not elected by people. Let’s begin with Minnesota governor Tim Walz. His...

More subfreezing air would also surge into the Upper Midwest, allowing for heavy snow to develop north of the swath of ice. “Don’t be married to the location, but get married to the idea that the upper echelon of ice accumulation could be a tenth to a quarter,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said. “That’s enough for power outages. So, know that travel is going to be disrupted, but also we could lose power. So, it’s a good idea to grab extra supplies if you’re in the zone.” With scenario two, a weaker low-pressure system would develop in the Plains,...

A​ long-lived thunderstorm complex called a derecho raced across the Midwest Monday night, producing widespread damaging winds from Iowa to Illinois, including Chicago, Indiana and southwest Michigan. I​n Indiana, a 44-year-old woman was reportedly killed when a tree fell on her Cedar Lake home, according to ABC 7 Chicago. W​hile travelers inside Chicago's O'Hare International Airport were told to shelter in place during a tornado warning, dozens of planes sat on the taxiway with passengers inside.

Temperatures will build to their highest marks in years across the Midwest and Northeast and stay at sizzling levels for days as Mother Nature cranks up the heat ahead of astronomical summer, which begins Thursday, June 20, at 4:50 p.m. EDT. AccuWeather's long-range team has been sounding the alarm for more than a week on building heat in the East during the third week of June that would put millions at the mercy of a prolonged stretch of 90-degree Fahrenheit temperatures. The longevity of the intense heat will put additional strain on residents and electrical infrastructure. For many in the...

Highs soaring toward the middle 90s will spread from the southern Great Lakes and Ohio Valley into the Northeast during the first half of this week. This heat will persist through the end of the week in many of these same areas. Widespread d​aily record highs will be set into Saturday. A few cities that could set new records at times through Saturday include Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Hartford and Burlington. Dew points will also increase, meaning it will feel sticky and humid. When the humidity is added to the hotter-than-average temperatures, feels-like temperatures will be even higher. In...

Severe weather will focus across the High Plains into Saturday night before expanding to the Upper Midwest by later Sunday, then reload over the High Plains and Rockies and advance into the Midwest again next week. AccuWeather meteorologists warn that more storms packing tornadoes and big hail will continue to pose risks to lives and property. Areas of severe thunderstorms will shift back and forth from near the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River into next week. May typically brings a strong surge in severe weather across the United States. However, storm activity this past month has propelled the tally...

In a series of events that has garnered attention from multiple communities in the Heartland, an organization of do-gooders has demonstrated an out-of-the-box approach to stopping pedophiles. The group, which is called “Bikers Against Predators,” has been conducting operations to catch sex offenders. The organization, which is comprised of motorcyclists, employs various methods to hunt these individuals down and aid law enforcement in apprehending them. Recently, the group proved instrumental in catching three different suspects. There are open investigations in three Heartland communities after an organization held operations to catch sex offenders in each town. The group “Bikers Against Predators”...

The Midwest and the Great Lakes regions will have some of the hottest housing markets in the U.S. this year, according to Zillow. The real estate marketplace predicted Buffalo, N.Y., to be the “nation’s hottest housing market in 2024,” with Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; and Providence, R.I., rounding out the top five. “These should stand out as strong in a housing market still buffeted by low inventory and relatively high mortgage rates and prices,” Zillow added in its report released last week. Other cities included in Zillow’s top 10 projected hottest housing markets for 2024 include Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Cleveland,...

Upstate New York is bracing for up to a foot of snow this weekend as New Jersey and Connecticut could see 6 inches and the Midwest gears up for possible blizzard conditions. The Capital Region is preparing to dig out as 8 to 12 inches of snow is about to pile high in the Albany area as the storm system moves through. Six inches or more are possible in parts of Connecticut and New Jersey, especially in Sussex and Morristown, Fox Weather’s Marissa Lautenbacher told The Post Friday. However, coastal regions like New York City and Long Island should keep...

We fought endless wars overseas for two decades, only to bring in record numbers of refugees from the very places from which we sought to protect ourselves. Thanks to mass Middle East migration as the only remaining legacy of the trillions of dollars pumped into the “Global War on Terror,” America’s heartland is just as vulnerable to Islamic terror as New York and Los Angeles. Believe it or not, there was an Islamic terror attack in Fargo, North Dakota, earlier this month, one that local law enforcement believes could have resulted in countless casualties instead of the one police officer...

A devastating 'supercell' tornado system has ripped through Kansas and Oklahoma, killing at least two people while levelling entire homes and leaving a trail of destruction across multiple counties. The terrifying twisters tore through the Midwest Wednesday evening, while parts of Nebraska, Missouri, Texas and Iowa have also been placed under tornado and severe thunderstorm watches. Tennis-ball sized hail and torrential winds cut across the region, leaving approximately 20,000 people in the dark after the storms downed powerlines.

The BP-Husky Toledo refinery in Oregon, Ohio, has been “safely shut down” after a fire reportedly broke out for no apparent reason. A BP spokesperson told Reuters that the company suspects “leaking fumes from a crude unit may have caused the ignition in another unit at the facility.” This same person added that workers at the facility had just “finished a maintenance turnaround” a few weeks prior after having been offline for some time. (Related: Remember back in the summer when several Texas oil refineries shut down under similarly suspicious circumstances?) According to reports, the BP-Husky Toledo refinery processes up...

COLUMBUS, Ind. — An energy grid operator has warned Indiana and other Midwestern states of the possibility of rolling blackouts this summer as extreme heat combines with a projected power capacity shortage and increased demand. Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), an independent, not-for-profit organization that delivers electric power across 15 U.S. states — including Indiana — and the Canadian province of Manitoba, is warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, according to Bartholomew County REMC.

Trump has opened up a breathtaking 11-point lead over Biden in Iowa, expanding on the 8-point margin by which he defeated Biden there last year. The Des Moines Register poll confirms that this key battleground state in the Midwest has turned solidly Republican, thanks to Trump. The DMR poll, long considered the gold standard for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses every four years, found that Trump is ahead by 76% to 15% among evangelical likely voters, 64% to 26% among rural likely voters, and 59% to 31% among likely voters without a college degree. Only 33% of Iowa adults say they...

Fatigued from the punishing and arbitrary restrictions, we saw South Dakota like a man dying of thirst sees a glass of water.I shut the car door and sighed. “I don’t want to go back,” I said, stuffing my mask in the cupholder. We were about to get back on the interstate as we wound our way through Montana toward Washington state, our home. It wasn’t a decision, just how I felt. But saying it out loud set us on an unstoppable course. Just a few months later, we were traveling back across the I-90 to the Black Hills of South...

Millions of people living in the Midwestern region of the U.S. received their first blizzard warnings of the season on Thursday, NBC News reported. Parts of northeastern South Dakota and western Minnesota were issued blizzard warnings on Thursday. Both areas are part of “Blizzard Alley,” according to NBC News. November blizzards are a rarity; the last time there was a blizzard warning in November was in 2016 in South Dakota, NBC News noted.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Like other ranchers across the country, Rusty Kemp for years grumbled about rock-bottom prices paid for the cattle he raised in central Nebraska, even as the cost of beef at grocery stores kept climbing. He and his neighbors blamed it on consolidation in the beef industry stretching back to the 1970s that resulted in four companies slaughtering over 80% of the nation’s cattle, giving the processors more power to set prices while ranchers struggled to make a living. Federal data show that for every dollar spent on food, the share that went to ranchers and...

Zuckerberg’s recent donation of $400 million has been thrown into greater controversy with the revelation that his foundation’s lead in policy and advocacy formerly worked as the campaign manager and senior advisor to former President Obama. David Plouffe was hired in 2017 to lead policy and advocacy work at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a charity founded in 2015 by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan “to accelerate progress in Education, Justice & Opportunity and Science.” Plouffe’s background includes extensive involvement as a policy leader in the Obama campaigns and organizations like Uber, CZI, and most recently...