The extreme cold weather of the polar vortex has claimed a young victim.
A 6-year-old Bemidji, Minnesota girl is dead after being exposed to the frigid temperatures of that northern community.
The girl was found lying in front of an apartment building, fully dressed in gloves, a coat and hat, but it wasn’t enough for her to be able to survive in the elements. The temperature was 20 below zero with a wind chill passing 40 below.
Emergency personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s office is performing an autopsy.
Neighbors say the girl lived in the apartments with her mother and 3-year-old sibling. Police say the girl’s mother was not there the night before the girl’s body was found and they do not know why the girl was outside.
While no arrests have been made, police say that could change pending the outcome of the autopsy.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association has sent a threatening letter to a school in Minnesota that was working with a local church to feed starving children in Haiti.
The AHA claims parents of a student at the School of Engineering and Arts were angry that their children were taken to a local church where they packed boxes of food for starving children in Haiti. The food would be distributed through a Christian organization that focuses on feeding the hungry.
The packing of the boxes happened at a local Lutheran church and the AHA claims that just being there violates the student’s First Amendment rights. The group also objected to the fact the packages were called “manna” packages.
The school defended the action by saying the first through third graders participated in a valuable community service learning activity with hundreds of community residents.
“The students learn there are people the world who are not as fortunate as them,” Latisha Gray told Fox News. “They believe they are being a part of the solution.”
It’s been over 20 years since the biggest of the Great Lakes completely froze. Now, experts watching Lake Superior say it’s likely that the current cold freeze will bring a total freezing of the lake after closing in on a 20-year record.
The ice cover on the lake reached 91 percent coverage on February 5, 1994, the record during the last 20 years. Jay Austin of the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minnesota, says it won’t be long until that record falls.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration says the average depth of ice on the lake is 10 inches. On February 10th, all the Great Lakes were 80.4 percent covered in ice compared to 38.4 percent last year.
Austin says that the extraordinary cold winter, that included Duluth breaking an all-time record with 23 straight days below zero, will have a strong influence on the region’s weather this year.
“Typically, the lake will start warming up in late June,” Austin told CNS News. “It will be August before we see that this year.”
Austin said the “air conditioning (lake) effect” would be stronger than usual, keeping temperatures down well into the summer.
Fourth-graders on a fossil hunt to mark the end of school ended up experiencing a horrific tragedy when one of their classmates was buried in a landslide. Continue reading →
Four Minnesota men have been sentenced to prison for their role in supporting the al-Shabab terrorist group in Somalia.
Abdifatah Isse, Salah Ahmed and Ahmed Mahamud were sentenced to three years in prison for providing material support to terrorists. Omer Mohamed received a 12-year sentence for conspiracy to provide material support. Continue reading →
Winter Storm “Q,” which has already dumped a layer of snow in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, moves with full force into the eastern Plains and Midwest on Thursday, where it could dump a foot and a half of snow in some areas. Continue reading →
Winter Storm “Q,” which has already dumped a layer of snow in Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California, moves with full force into the eastern Plains and Midwest on Thursday, where it could dump a foot and a half of snow in some areas. 
