(mid tempo music) - [Announcer] Wheelan-Pressely Funeral Home and Crematory have been serving Quad City families and veterans since 1889.

Wheelan-Pressly funeral homes are located in Rock Island, Milan and Reynolds, and are proud supporters of WQPT.

- [Announcer] At IHMVCU, we've always been here for you.

You are, and always will be our top priority.

We care about your financial and physical health, and we are here.

IHMVCU is a proud supporter of WQPT.

- [Announcer] Alternatives is a proud supporter of WQPT, and has been serving our community for 40 years.

Alternatives provides professional guidance to maintain independence and quality of life for older adults and adults with disabilities.

- Welcome to spring.

Are you ready to weather it, and making sure new businesses succeed and thrive in the cities?

(uptempo music) Western Illinois University is investing in the future of businesses in the cities, and we'll talk about two organizations that are helping make that possible for the Hispanic community in particular.

But first, welcome to April, welcome to spring.

We just got through a long and sometimes cold and wet winter, so what's it look like right now?

And what are some of the long term trends we're seeing with our weather and our climate?

We talked with the Illinois State climatologist, Dr. Trent Ford, about our spring ahead and what we may see after that.

Dr. Ford, thanks for joining us.

Was it a tough winter?

And does that have any, I don't know, harbinger of what our spring's gonna be like?

- You know, it was an odd winter overall.

I think for the Quad Cities, for most of the State of Illinois, it was a winter when you...

When you take the whole thing from the start of the snow season in October, all the way through where...

Knock on wood, we're not all the way through, you know, the snow season yet, but especially for climatological winter, December through February, it averaged out to be pretty average winter.

But December was extremely warm, January and February were a bit cooler, got a lot of snow here in central Illinois.

You all missed out a little bit more in the Quad Cities, but still got closer to normal in February.

So overall kind of an average winter.

What we've seen from spring, and really there's not necessarily a great relationship between how strong your winter is or how weak your winter is and what your spring's gonna be like.

What we've seen from spring so far is a lot of variability.

And that's pretty normal from March, highs in the seventies and lows in the single digits, and back and forth.

And what we're seeing the outlooks, at least for the month of April as a whole, and then like the three month period between April, May and June, kind of that the transition between spring and what we'd consider summer, is elevated chances of above normal temperatures and above normal precipitation, for the Quad Cities area, as well as for most the State of Illinois.

So been pretty variable, that transition between winter and spring.

It can catch a lot of folks by surprise.

First time you feel 70 degrees, it's like, "Yo, all right, "this is what this feels like, it's fantastic."

But then the cold comes back, but of course, as we move towards April, and especially into May, the colder air becomes warmer and warmer.

So I do expect us to get a little bit more mild conditions as we move farther into spring.

- Well, and as you know, parts of Illinois and large parts of Iowa as well have been facing various levels of drought conditions.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's vastly improved in the Northern part of Illinois, Southern part of Illinois still is facing that.

I mean, that's still gonna be a concern for farmers.

I mean, we're walking outside, we're getting mud on our feet and we have a problem believing that we have a drought.

- Yeah, I know winter and spring are tough to communicate and understand drought.

First and foremost, when we're talking about agriculture, actually a little bit of dry soil in the spring can be a benefit because it can expedite field work, make for less conditions that can make for things like compacted soils, issues with getting equipment in things like that.

So actually drier soils, especially that top layer soil can actually make things go a little smoother during the planting season.

The problem is that if the dry soil sticks around the summertime, when the heat sets in, that can create issues with the crop.

So I kind of battle back and forth to say, yes, the rain we're getting it's delaying you getting in the field early, but it also is gonna be a saving grace down the road.

So, we take a little bit, even if it creates a little bit of delay.

The last couple weeks have been greatly beneficial to getting rid, or at least improving drought conditions in Northern Illinois especially.

Really all across the I-80 corridor, most places picked up anywhere between two and three inches over the last 10 days.

And that fell on entirely thawed soils.

So it didn't just run off those frozen and soils and go into the streams and out of the area, it's soaked into the soils.

I'm hearing a lot of folks, like you just said with muddy top soils.

The big thing though, is that drought doesn't end with one rain event, at least in most cases, and this is not an exception.

Because, prolonged periods of drought, not only affect your top soil, maybe your your top 12 or 18 inches of soil, but they can penetrate down into your deeper layer of soil in your groundwater, which is something we saw in Northern Illinois from last year.

And so, although the top soil is wet, that moisture is ideally going to drain down to the deeper layer of soil to recharge that, and it's more of a shallow groundwater.

That's actually got two advantages.

One, we get that water in the deeper layer soil where it needs to be when plants need it.

Second of all, though, the dryer, deeper layer of soil's gonna allow that water, that's creating the mud that you're stepping in right now to drain down faster.

And so your top soil dries out faster, when your deeper layer soil is drier, which is what you have right now in Northern Illinois.

So honestly, right now, the outlook is much better than if it was just two to three weeks ago that things have improved.

Now we're not out of drought necessarily for a large part of Northern Illinois, but we're moving in the right direction for sure.

- We're coming out of a La Nina winter, are we not?

I mean, how long does this last and did it actually occur the way you thought it was?

- No.

Yeah, no, I mean it...

So we're coming out of the second straight winter of La Nina, it's called a double dip La Nina, which is not unprecedented.

They do tend to happen where we get to two years in a row.

What's interesting about this year is that this winter sort of shaped up like a La Nina winter for the broader perspective.

La Nina winters tend to be very wet in the Ohio Valley.

So we're thinking like Southern Illinois, all the way up to parts of Northern Kentucky.

That was the case, it was very wet.

They tend to be dryer in the Plains, definitely the case, parts of Eastern Nebraska, less than half an inch of total precipitation for the winter.

So that was definitely the case.

And then somewhere in between, between, let's say Lexington, Kentucky, and Omaha, Nebraska, it's kind of throw your hands in the air, who's gonna be dry, who's gonna be wet?

In this case, that line really played out between let's say Peoria and the Quad Cities, where Peoria area we got quite a bit of snow.

These amount of precipitation, the Quad Cities were left a little bit dryer this winter.

And so in that sense, the La Nina winter did play out the way that we kind of typically expect it to.

Of course, year to year variability is really important.

Not every La Nina year looks like every other year.

What's interesting this year though, is that we're still in La Nina.

Often we talk about the El Nino Southern oscillation, which is El Nino, it's cousin La Nina, and we talk about that as a winter phenomenon.

It's happening, but it's most relevant to the Midwest climate, winter time.

In fact, this year we're still in La Nina, it's persisting.

And the latest outlooks from NOAA, show or suggest that we are likely to be in La Nina, at least into summertime, if it through summertime, which is fairly rare.

Now, the effects of La Nina on our climate do dwindle as we move towards the summertime, but they can still be there in persistence in the atmosphere.

And that again, can lead us into a bit of a drier outlook for areas farther to our West, Western Iowa, Eastern Nebraska, their outlook is pretty dry for the spring and summertime.

So that's kind of, we're still dealing with the remnants of La Nina, it's still here, although again, it plays less of a role in our climate than it would've in wintertime.

- And I wanna talk about climate change in particular.

And one of the things that as you were mentioning, the amount of rainfall that you get, and when you get it are both two critical calculations to how good our soil does, but farmers are facing a couple things that maybe they didn't always face.

Micro bursts of rain and also very strong sudden winds as well, which of course, affecting the corn crops.

Is that a sign of a changing climate or is that just weather?

- Yeah, it's a good question.

So we have seen an increase in total precipitation every single season, and year over year, we've also seen an increase in very intense precipitation, which is what you're talking about there.

Kind of getting, let's say the same amount of precipitation in a month, but it's coming in to fewer events, with more bursts of rainfall.

And that creates all sorts of problems with inundation and flooding when you first get that rainfall, but then also a lot of that runs off, which means that it's not there in your soil to use during a dry spell, and that comes after that.

So that is a problem.

And that is one at least.

Year to year variability does play a really important role in that, but there is a consistent signal over the historical period of an influence of climate change on our precipitation intensity.

Now, when it comes to strong winds and other severe weather, they are incredibly destructive to infrastructure and agriculture.

There hasn't been necessarily a really well defined signal, climate change signal in severe wind events.

Mostly that's because they're very hard to observe over the large scale, let alone keep a consistent record of, and that makes it even harder to attribute any sort of apparent trend in those wind events to climate change.

And especially to anthropogenic climate change, the human effects on our climate.

And so it's a lot harder to do that, than for things like drought or wildfire, or for example, extreme precipitation, like I just mentioned.

So that makes it a little bit harder to do that.

I will say that when we run climate projections to end of the century and beyond, there's not a situation where we don't see a continuation, at least a continuation of this sort of frequency of severe wind events that we've seen over the last 30 to 50 years.

And so there may not necessarily be a great signal right now that we can pick out to say, yes, climate change is causing any sort of increase or change in these severe wind events, but I am confident in saying that this is going to be...

The strong winds, the destructive winds, are something that we're going to be dealing with now and into the future, irrespective of climate change.

- Well, and with climate change, also, we're seeing a longer growing season, which I think most people would sit back and go, "Well, what would be wrong with that?

"That's great."

But as you well know, I mean, then you get more insects, insects that aren't necessarily native here are moving further North.

What is the real impact of a longer growing season?

- Yeah, so the longer growing season can be beneficial.

The growing season lengthening means that our last spring freeze is moving earlier into spring, so planting dates can theoretically move up.

Some of those longer term, longer maturity hybrids of corn, soybeans, other plants can be planted.

And the last fall freeze actually pushes back.

At the same time, our kind of shoulder seasons of spring and fall are getting warmer overall.

And so we can actually accumulate growing degree days or growing degree units, that can help push say a corn crop to maturity later into the season, which is something that we've seen in recent years like 2019, when we had problems with delayed planting.

The problem is it's not just corn and beans that like good growing season, on overall warmer and wetter Illinois, lots of what we consider weeds or invasive, non-native species of plants, and as you mentioned, animals and bugs, also enjoy a warmer and wetter, Illinois.

And so overall what we've seen in the past couple decades, and what are projected with a longer growing season among other things, changes in precipitation, a warmer winter, plays a big factor in this.

It just means more challenges from pest management standpoint.

So, in agriculture dealing with integrated pest management, that's weeds, it's pests like insects, it's diseases.

All of the management of those things becomes more challenging and more pressing as the climate continues to change.

One example of that we saw from last year...

I've spent almost my entire life in Central Illinois, I don't remember seeing as many crop dusters in the air, as for as long period of time as I did last year.

And part of that was just fighting fungal disease, because it was so wet, so consistently wet here in Central Illinois for so long that humidity played a on that as well, that everybody was having to spray early, spray often with their fungicides.

And of course, it's another added cost to trying to get the best yield you can.

And so those sorts of challenges are very likely to continue if not accelerate into the future, with changes in both growing season and our winters.

- Well, as you well know, we're entering the tornado season as well right now.

And Tornado Alley is moving a little bit to the East, it appears, which of course would endanger more of Illinois.

Then you think of the last... And correct me if I'm wrong, I think of the last big tornado in Illinois being in Washington by Peoria, that was like December near Christmas, which had a lot of people going, "Oh yeah, they right, it can happen in any month."

Can you make any prediction about a tornado season for Illinois and Iowa right now?

Or have we been inordinately lucky other than the poor folks in Washington?

- Well, honestly, the first thing I start with when talking about severe weather, especially this idea of a tornado season is that severe weather, tornadoes, they can and do happen all year round.

For example, last year in December 10th, we think about the outbreak that happened in Kentucky, there was a tornado in Edwardsville, Illinois, that struck that warehouse and killed six people.

So those things do happen in Illinois, and it's not out of the ordinary for us to get a full of tornadoes during a tornado outbreak, in our winter months, let alone our spring months.

Now it is true that our peak tornado frequency is between April and June.

So we're moving towards that pretty quickly.

Overall, as far as the effect of climate change, like you mentioned, there have been studies that have suggested this kind of observed shift, Eastward and Southeastward shift in tornado.

We think about Tornado Alley as basically Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, maybe parts of Nebraska.

In reality, what we're seeing is an increased frequency of tornado days in the kind of Southeast Mid-South even parts of the Southern Midwest, including much of Illinois.

And that's been over the last 30 to 50 years.

The small amount of research has been done as far as climate change effects, project maybe a continuation of that trend.

I will say, however though, that these trends are fairly small, relative to trends in urban growth and development.

So for example, you think about a city, like for example, the Quad Cities put together just from focus on Moline or Davenport, for example.

The vulnerability of folks in those cities to tornadoes comes from the exposure to the hazard, like how many tornadoes happen and where you're at.

The thing is, is that even if there's a slow light uptick in the number of tornadoes, we're seeing our urban areas sprawl and grow at a much faster rate, meaning that because there's more areas of people living in, as opposed to let's say, empty farmland or empty naturalized lands, that we have a higher risk of those folks coming in contact with the tornado.

And so, we think about climate change as an issue of the tornado frequency, but in fact, even if we don't see an increase in the number of tornadoes, if it stays the same way it has been the last 30 years, the fact that with our development, taking up more land, puts us at a higher risk of having a sort of a high impact, a potentially deadly tornado event.

- Illinois state climatologist, Dr. Trent Ford.

In a moment it's no longer business as usual.

The help Western Illinois University is offering minority and women-led businesses in the cities.

But first Laura Adams is ready to help you enjoy the best of April activities throughout the area.

Here she is out and about.

- [Laura] This is out and about for April 8th-14th, Made QC, a handmade and vintage market opens at The Bend XPO, the eighth from 5:00 to 8:00, while the annual Davenport model Railroad & Memorabilia show takes place at the Mississippi Valley fairgrounds, the ninth from 9:30 to 3:00.

The Moline Township Easter Egg Hunt at Stevens Square Park takes place the ninth at noon, or check out Bunnies Baskets & Brews at the Hauberg Estate, the ninth at 4:00.

Ballet Quad Cities present "Alice in Wonderland" at the Adler theater at 2:30 and 7:30, and Circa '21 ones "Just Desserts:A Musical Bake-off" continues, while next door at the speakeasy, Bottoms Up Burlesque celebrate their 10th anniversary, April 14th-16th.

"Veronica's Room," a thriller by Ira Levin, offers chills at the Black Box Theater through the 16th, and there's still time to catch "Peter and the Starcatcher" at the Spotlight Theater.

Music Hill presents "Disaster," the '70 movie musical closing on the 10th, and the Brunner Theater presents "The Captive," through the ninth.

At Centennial Hall.

Aaron Dworkin performs "American Rhapsody" with the Augustana Symphony Orchestra on the eighth at 7:30.

The Augustana Chamber Singers perform the 10th at 4:00.

And the Beyonce Mass celebrating Black women is on the 13th at 7:00.

Lewis Knudsen, appears at Iron and Grain the ninth at 9:00 AM, and Kray VanKirk performs at the Bishop Hill Creative Commons, the tenth at 7:00.

For more information visit wqpt.org.

- Thank you Laura.

Western Illinois University has continued its outreach throughout the cities in a number of ways.

One of the significant areas of focus is business development, particularly minority run and women-led opportunities.

The Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs and the Illinois Small Business Development Center, both are facilities at the Macomb and Quad City Campuses.

Maria Ramos Aguilar has been added to the staff specializing in minority outreach and community engagement.

And we talk with Maria about the offerings from Western and why it's more important than ever before.

We all know that small businesses and entrepreneurs are really the backbone of the economy.

I mean, it's the driver of new jobs in so many different ways.

What is it that you offer to help these entrepreneurs?

- Yes, that's right.

Small businesses are essential for the future.

Not only from the perspective of job creation and economic growth, but also because of the flexibility to adapt to changes.

Therefore, the role that I play as an economic developer, as a member of the Hispanic community, and now as a new business advisor, allows me through the Illinois Small Business Development Center of Western Illinois University QC, and thanks to the leading institutions that host us, such as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Community and Economic Opportunity, and the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs, offer constructive and concise information for new and potential business owners, providing expert advice, business guidance, mentorship, and of course training.

- Well, and you are specializing, of course, in Hispanic minority businesses, as well as female led businesses.

I mean, these are areas that have just only recently gotten more attention in the Quad City area, but it is critically important, is it not?

- Yes, of course.

Well, I could say a lot about this.

I mean, I belong to a minority group, and I know how hard it can be for us to stand out, even survive, especially when you are new to this country, and just starting a new life.

Minority groups have to face many challenges, such as language, mistrust, cultural differences, technology, access to both economic and relief resources.

And from my point of view, minorities can face inequality, discrimination, and even exclusion.

What we want to achieve in this country... And I am talking as a part of a minority group.

Is development, in the wide branch of meanings that it represent.

To be recognized as such communities of entrepreneurs, fighters, and successful.

We want to be part of the team that help this country achieve optimal results and sustainable development on this nation into our future generations, through the success of the small businesses.

Therefore, the work we do at the Illinois Small Business Development Center at Western Illinois University, QC and in conjunction with other institutions, such as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Community and Economic Opportunity, the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs, and of course, Western Illinois University, is a step in the right direction to provide support to minority groups.

And me personally, by sharing the same language and culture as many Spanish speaking people, this allows me to understand them from the same cultural perspective, and this also allowed me to know how to lead or conduct myself with them.

And I would like to answer to this question in Spanish as well, if you allow me, because I- - Sure.

- I believe it's really, really important that the people who listen to us and who only speak Spanish, have the opportunity to hear that I have to say- - Sure, absolutely.

- Regarding the questions, (speaking in foreign language) - You take what you're doing with SBA and the Western Illinois University, and then you add it to the Quad City's, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, it's really giving a good safety net for Hispanic business people.

Is it not?

- Yes, that's correct.

- And what is the first step?

I mean, what do you really want to accomplish for some of these Hispanic businesses?

I mean, is it more of, they bounce ideas off you, and you help them that way, or is there a way that you help them when they're very beginning and struggling and really don't have an idea of their future plans?

- Yeah, my advice will be to do feasibility study first.

Perhaps the most crucial issue an entrepreneur will face after expressing their interest in starting a new business or capitalize on an apparent opportunity in their existing business, determine the feasibility of their idea.

And entering the right business at the right time is a simple piece of advice, but extremely difficult to implement since it's necessary to evaluate the environment that surround us personally, culturally and globally.

And we can also help people with the feasibility study.

We also offer a workshop called Starting Your Business in Illinois, in Spanish as well in English.

And these workshops supports all of those people who want to start a business, but they don't know where to start or how to start.

- Maria Ramos Aguilar, with the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, and the Illinois Small Business Development Center, which both have facilities at Western Illinois', Macomb and Quad City campuses.

On the air, on the radio, on the web.

On your mobile device and streaming on your computer, thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about the issues on "The Cities."

(mid tempo music) - [Announcer] Wheelan-Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory have been serving Quad City families and veterans since 1889.

Wheelan-Pressly Funeral Homes are located in Rock island, Milan and Reynolds, and are proud supporters of WQPT.

- [Announcer] At IHMVCU, we've always been here for you.

You are, and always will be our top priority.

We care about your financial and physical health, and we are here.

IHMVCU is a proud supporter of WQPT.

- [Announcer] Alternatives is a proud supporter of WQPT and has been serving our community for 40 years.

Alternatives provides professional guidance to maintain independence and quality of life for older adults and adults with disabilities.