The Topline: Minnesota’s long drought is finally over

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Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: Minnesota out of drought for the first time in two years; the Lower 48’s blizzard capital; taxpayers on the hook for questionable addiction services; year-over-year shootings flat in Minneapolis; energy drinks and cardiac arrest.

Drought officially ends

Thanks to a seemingly nonstop series of rains there is no drought in Minnesota for the first time since the spring of 2022, the latest state drought monitor shows . Currently there’s just a sliver of land in north-central Minnesota where conditions are “abnormally dry,” but not dry enough to be called a drought.

“Virtually the entire state of Minnesota had above-normal precipitation for the spring season,” the state climatology office recently wrote . “Many stations, in all regions of Minnesota, exceeded normal precipitation for the season by at least 50%.” They’ve got a nifty online tool that allows you to see how year-to-date precipitation in your region stacks up with historic averages.

The latest long term outlooks from the National Weather Service predict normal temperature and precipitation for the summer months, which will hopefully keep the drought at bay.

Minnesota gets more blizzard warnings than anywhere else in the Lower 48

A fun factoid I learned on Reddit this week: Blizzard warnings are more common here than in any other state with the exception of Alaska.

The data come from a climate data clearinghouse at Iowa State University , and show that we’ve had about 256 blizzard warnings over the past 20 or so years. The next-highest state is South Dakota, with 159.

Part of this may be due to differences in the criteria used by various National Weather Service offices to issue a warning. But most of it is simply due to climate and topography: Minnesota is famously cold and flat, a perfect setup for strong winds and blowing snow.

Breaking the data down by National Weather Service offices underscore this point, as it reveals that the Red River Valley is the epicenter of Lower 48 blizzard warnings .

Alaska’s got everyone beat though, as they’ve issued over 900 warnings over the same 20-year period.

Payments rise sharply for peer services in addiction treatment

But not all of that money is going to certified peer counselors, KARE-11 found .

Since 2019 Minnesota has allowed peer recovery specialists — people in long-term recovery from substance abuse who counsel others just starting treatment — to be paid using Medicaid funds. Payments for those services exploded from $5.7 million in 2022 to $22 million in 2023.

The regulations explicitly state that to be certified, a peer recovery specialist must be in recovery themselves. Simply having a friend or family member in recovery doesn’t cut it.

But at least one treatment center, Evergreen Recovery in St. Paul, is playing it fast-and-loose with those rules, KARE-11 found. The center’s owner David Backus told the news organization that most of their peer specialists don’t have personal addiction experience. He was unable to explain how to comport that with state regulations.

It’s just one item in a pattern of irregular billing practices that has state and federal investigators looking into the center’s operations.

Shootings in Minneapolis are flat year-over-year

Murder rates appear to be falling sharply nationwide in 2024, according to preliminary data collected by crime analyst Jeff Asher. That comes on top of already-historic declines last year.

“A preponderance of evidence points to a strong decline in gun violence and murder in the United States in 2024,” Asher writes.

But Minneapolis isn’t doing quite as well as peer cities, the data show. Shootings are pretty much flat year-over-year, while most other cities analyzed by Asher are showing double-digit decreases. Only three out of 30 major cities on the list have posted increases.

As of this writing, Minneapolis’ crime dashboard shows that homicide, burglaries and thefts are up slightly, while assaults are down by a little bit. Motor vehicle theft and carjackings, on the other hand, are down by considerable amounts, as are calls for shots fired.

If you have a genetic heart condition, skip the energy drinks, study finds

The Rochester Post Bulletin reports on a Mayo Clinic study of patients at the hospital’s heart rhythm laboratory from 2000 to 2023. They found that 5% of those patients had a heart attack shortly after consuming an energy drink, like Red Bull or Monster.

The study is purely correlational and doesn’t establish causality, the authors caution. But still, the linkage was strong enough that they felt heart patients should be warned.

The authors are particularly worried about patients setting themselves up for a “perfect storm” of stresses on the heart that could tip it into cardiac arrest: If somebody already has a heart condition, then layering on dehydration, sleep deprivation and the jolt from an energy drink could prove to be too much for the heart to handle at once.

Roughly 1 in 200 people have a genetic condition that may put them at risk from energy drinks, the authors said. Knowing your family’s heart history and your own history — particularly whether you’ve ever instantly blacked out due to exertion or excitement — are key.

Also, Red Bull and Monster are just kinda gross.

The post The Topline: Minnesota’s long drought is finally over appeared first on Minnesota Reformer .