Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
STORM WATCH 2026: March Blizzard Edition
TGIF, storm watchers. As you've likely heard, considering weather chatter is how our people interact with and relate to one another, we're about to get walloped this weekend by a big ol' late winter blizzard.
How walloped, you ask? Well, soon-to-retire MPR News meteorologist advises everyone to "get errands done today and Saturday" because NOAA is warning of "Extreme Impact" conditions in the Twin Cities. We're talkin' up to two feet of snow... or as little as eight inches, per the National Weather Service graphic below. There's a 10% chance we hit 31 inches, a total that would exceed the 28.4 dumped on us Halloween 1991—do people still talk about that storm?
“This is shaping up to be one of the most expansive and impactful storms that the United States has experienced so far this year,” according to AccuWeather meteorologist John Feerick. Some folks are using terms like "whiteout," while others are predicting broken records. "Drink lots of green tea red tea white tea to keep you warm and be extremely careful," advises popular Facebook weather guy Frankie MacDonald.
“The bottom line,” the National Weather Service says, “no matter what headline ends up being issued is that travel will be next to impossible on Sunday as snow continues to pile up.”
How Much of Your Utility Bill Goes to Corporate Profit?
That's the question utility watchdog org Energy & Policy Institute helps you answer with this nifty new tool. You punch in your utility company, fill in what your typical bill runs you, and then see what percentage goes to profit.
To train the tool, EPI studied recent financial data from 110 investor-owned utility companies, including Minnesota power players Xcel Energy, Otter Tail Power, and Allete—the last of which is being gobbled up by private-equity villain BlackRock. All three firms ranked among the top 60 national price gougers, with average profit margins of around 17% for Ottertail, 15% for Xcel, and 13% for Allete.
Karlee Weinmann, a locally based EPI researcher, sent Racket the following explainer...
The tool comes amid an affordability crunch for consumers and soaring profits for utilities and their shareholders. An astonishing ~8,000+ comments have been submitted in Xcel's ongoing Minnesota rate case, many of which focus on corporate profits and exorbitant executive pay. Monopoly utilities, protected from competition, are seeing profit margins that far exceed what is typical across the U.S. economy—while most industries operate on single-digit margins, many utilities are securing comparatively outsized returns.
Makes you wonder if essential services should be provided by for-profit monopolies. Oh well! For much number-crunching and analysis of the EPI report from which the nifty tool is based, check out Brian Martucci's piece over at the Minnesota Reformer.
A Devastating Diagnosis at Age 42
Speaking of the Minnesota Reformer, remember Christopher Ingraham? The reliably excellent former Reformer reporter, who has since moved to upstate New York, wrote a harrowing essay for Slate this week headlined "The Year I Was Supposed to Die."
Here's how the story begins:
In the fall of 2022, when I was 42 and living with my wife and three young kids in a small town in northwest Minnesota, a specialist at an unfamiliar hospital approached us with some test results. He seemed genuinely shaken. “I don’t want to scare you guys,” he said, “but this is the kind of thing where you are going to want to have your affairs in order.”
Ingraham had been diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile duct, a rare and "especially brutal" cancer with a five-year survival rate of just about 10%. He speaks with specialists at the Mayo Clinic; he opts for a liver transplant; he looks around for somewhere to cast blame; he starts "exercising like a maniac." There are frightening ups and downs, but—not to spoil the ending—he's still here to write about the experience today.
The story is only readable for Slate Plus members, which we are not, so uh... prepare to pony up the $5 to support independent journalism—a good thing to do!—or figure out your preferred paywall workaround. (It's a mortal sin to bypass Racket's paywall, FTR.)
“Ope, the Drones Are Back Tonight”
Have you noticed more drones than usual in Minneapolis in recent months? If so, you’re not alone. Jon Collins of MPR News spoke to folks who’ve been tracking drone activity, including one woman who has seen them hovering outside her bedroom window. As south Minneapolis resident puts it, “People keep track in the neighborhood chats, “Ope, the drones are back tonight.’”
Collins takes on a difficult task in this story: How can you show that the federal government is using drones on Minnesotans who’ve taken a stand against ICE if the feds won’t admit it? Well, for starters, no local government is behind the activity. A spokesperson for the ACLU confirms that this is unconstitutional, saying, “Anybody in government cannot fly a drone where somebody has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
