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In Hennepin County, outdoor warning sirens still key to delivering severe weather alerts

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When a family of tornadoes roared across the Twin Cities on May 6, 1965, authorities sounded civil defense sirens to warn people to take cover.

It was a bold move that had never been tried before, and it worked.

“They got it,” said Eric Waage, director of Hennepin County Emergency Management. “They took shelter. The sirens saved lives.”

Once reserved to alert civilians to enemy military attacks, outdoor warning sirens remain a critical tool in warning the public of extremely large hail, destructive winds and tornadoes. On Thursday, sirens will blare at 1:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. as part of a statewide tornado drill to be held in conjunction with Severe Weather Awareness Week.

The drills, which will be canceled if there is severe weather, are meant to encourage people to think, “What would I do now?” Waage said.

Other activities to remind and educate people about what to do when severe weather strikes will be Monday through Friday.

From 1950 through 2020, Minnesota has averaged 29 tornadoes a year, according to the Minnesota State Climatology Office. While 77% of twisters in Minnesota occur during May, June and July, the violent spiral windstorms have been reported in every month of the year except January and February. In 2021, at least 16 tornadoes danced across Minnesota on Dec. 15, the latest date for a tornado ever reported in the state, records show.

Though none has been reported in Minnesota yet this year, there had been 519 nationwide as of Friday, nearly double the average at this point in the year, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center. Tornadoes already have led to 63 deaths this year, approaching the yearly nationwide average of 71.

The trend has Hennepin County officials fearing that 2023 could be an active summer locally. Urban areas are not immune, as shown by twisters that inflicted damage on north Little Rock, Ark., and other communities across the southern U.S. in recent weeks, Waage said.

In the past 50 years, more than 30 tornadoes have touched down in Hennepin County, including north Minneapolis in 2011 and Edina and south Minneapolis in 1981. In 1939, a storm raced from Medina to Anoka and became the namesake of the Anoka High School sports teams: the Tornadoes.

While the nearly 300 sirens in Hennepin County remain the most direct way to get the word out — warnings don’t have to pass through media outlets before reaching the public — the county in recent years has invested heavily in technology to expand ways to alert residents of the state’s most populous county, and fast.

“People don’t pay attention as they used to,” said Emily Jackson, a Hennepin County Emergency Management meteorologist. “They are not as weather aware.”

A large section of the county’s public works facility in Medina houses the Emergency Operations Center. The county has three meteorologists on staff to monitor weather conditions, and a network of 25 automated weather stations feeding them data. When strong storms develop, staff members come into the nerve center to monitor a bevy of radio frequencies, send out alerts to cell phones and on social media channels and even post messages on electronic highway billboards.

The county also holds annual training for severe weather reporting for staff and volunteer weather spotters and works in concert with the National Weather Service.

“We hope to provide even more accurate warnings,” Waage said.

In addition to tornado warnings, Hennepin County sirens sound when hail 2 12 inches or more in diameter is reported and when winds reach 80 mph or stronger.

That is one reason Hennepin County is among several agencies participating in Severe Weather Awareness Week. And the hope is residents, businesses and schools will participate, too.

Waage said all households should have a NOAA weather radio that broadcasts storm warnings and hazards instantly. Cell phones may not be the most reliable because they might not work in some buildings, he said.

“People need to have more than one method to be warned,” Waage said.

That is why the tried-and-true siren will always sound when severe weather strikes — an official confirmation that “it’s time to take protective action,” Waage said.



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Star Tribune

Moorhead man arrested after driving into squad cars, police say

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A Moorhead, Minn., man was arrested on Saturday while he fled the scene in his vehicle and rammed into squad cars, according to police.

At about 1 p.m. Saturday, officers responded to the 3200 block of 9th Street S. on a report of a domestic incident. Police said they spoke with a 19-year-old man at the scene and he was “uncooperative and argumentative,” according to a department news release.

The Minnesota Star Tribune does not typically name suspects until they are charged. The man allegedly fled in his vehicle and backed into a squad car. An officer pursued the man, who rammed into another squad car before leaving, police said.

He eventually returned to the scene where officers took him into custody. He was booked into the Clay County Correctional Facility a short time later.

The officer who pursued the suspect sought medical attention for pain after their vehicle was struck, police said. Two squad cars were damaged during the incident.

According to the county sheriff’s booking report, the man was arrested on charges including assault of a peace officer causing bodily harm, fleeing police in a motor vehicle, assault inflicting serious bodily harm with a dangerous weapon as well as damage to property over $1,000.



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Coloring book duo teams up again to highlight St. Paul’s Rondo history

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Kosfeld used family photographs and old newspaper pictures as the basis for her illustrations. She also researched clothing of the period. It was important to her, she said, that her drawings “were respectful. No cartoons or caricatures.”

“Rondo,” Kosfeld said, “can be a heavy subject to some communities. But I wanted to show it was just beautiful. Playful.”

The project took nearly two years to complete from January 2023 to early 2024. Kosfeld and Kronick published the coloring book themselves. The Rondo book can be found at several shops and bookstores in St. Paul, including Next Chapter Books, Red Balloon, Wet Paint, Waldmann Brewery, Subtext Books, the Minnesota Historical Society gift shop and St. Paul Children’s Hospital.

Kosfeld is working on a third coloring book with a St. Paul focus, this one on the art, architecture and history of the St. Paul park system, to be published by the Ramsey County Historical Society.



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Harris goes to church while Trump muses about reporters being shot

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LITITZ, Pa. — Kamala Harris told a Michigan church on Sunday that God offers America a ”divine plan strong enough to heal division,” while Donald Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot and labeled Democrats as ”demonic.”

The two major candidates took starkly different tones on the final Sunday of the campaign. Less than 48 hours before Election Day, Harris, the Democratic vice president, argued that Tuesday’s election offers voters the chance to reject ”chaos, fear and hate,” while Trump, the Republican former president, repeated lies about voter fraud to try to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and suggested that the country was falling apart without him in office.

Harris was concentrating her Sunday in Michigan, beginning the day with a few hundred parishioners at Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. It marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that Harris, who is Baptist, has spoken to a Black congregation, a reflection of how critical Black voters are across multiple battleground states.

”I see faith in action in remarkable ways,” she said in remarks that quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. ”I see a nation determined to turn the page on hate and division and chart a new way forward. As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states and so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice.”

She never mentioned Trump, though she’s certain to return to her more conventional partisan speech in stops later Sunday. But Harris did tell her friendly audience that ”there are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos.” The election and ”this moment in our nation,” she continued, ”has to be about so much more than partisan politics. It must be about the good work we can do together.”

Harris finished her remarks in about 11 minutes — starting and ending during Trump’s roughly 90-minute speech at a chilly outdoor rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, airport.

Trump usually veers from subject to subject, a discursive style he has labeled ”the weave.” But in Lancaster, he went on long tangents and hardly mentioned his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.

Instead, Trump relaunched criticisms of voting procedures across the nation and his own staff. He resurrected grievances about being prosecuted after trying to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, suggesting at one point that he ”shouldn’t have left” the White House.



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