Winter

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program was designed to help those with few resources cover their home energy bills in the summer and winter — but the entire staff was fired last week. Since October, the program has helped more than 100,00 Missouri households.

Winter storms every few weeks have taken a toll on small businesses, who spend more to deal with snow and lose profits when people stay home.

A Lawrence-based psychologist says more light exposure could help reduce the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Staffers at Care Beyond the Boulevard mobile health clinic ramped up operations to help fill the gap left from the sudden closure of a Kansas City, Kansas health clinic that mostly served unhoused and uninsured patients.

Another round of school closures in the Kansas City area has parents juggling work and child care yet again. Some school district are already considering whether to push back summer break.

The city of Lenexa will now allow Project 1020 to accept up to 50 people per night. The organization said it's been “overwhelmed” by demand for shelter and had to turn away people during Kansas City's recent winter storms.

Parts of the Kansas City region are under an Extreme Cold Warning until Thursday afternoon, with wind chills as low as 30 below. But the forecast for next week is significantly brighter.

Starting Monday night, a new blast of winter weather will see up to 10 inches of snow and wind chills as low as negative-30. The storm will plunge Missouri and Kansas into the freezing cold through Friday.

After a historically warm winter last year canceled several events, Michigan’s sturgeon season came back in full swing earlier this month. It broke records with the most participants and the fastest timing, for what’s already known as the shortest fishing season in the state.

Human biology thankfully allows us to adapt to major changes in temperature, but only so quickly. Professor Cara Ocobock is working with reindeer herders in subarctic Finland to find out how the human body evolved to withstand the extreme cold over time. What can we learn from communities that have a long history of living and working in the frigid weather?

Hundreds of unhoused people in Kansas City have been sleeping outside, even in the recent frigid temperatures. We asked them to explain — in their own words — why. Plus: sports betting will soon be available in Missouri, but public health experts worry about the effect online betting will have on gamblers' mental health.

Bundle up and prepare: People living "basically anywhere from the Rockies eastward" will see extremely cold temperatures over the next several days, a meteorologist says. That includes Kansas City, which is set to host a Chiefs playoffs game this weekend.