Forecasters say much colder weather will wash over Iowa late tomorrow (Friday) and air conditioners will be switched off as furnaces are turned on. Temperatures are expected to plummet from highs today (Thursday) in the 70s and 80s to lows Saturday night in the 30s. Bruce McDowell, spokesman for the American Gas Association, says Iowans who heat their homes with natural gas can expect to see a moderate price hike in the season ahead.

“Really not much of a change from last year,” McDowell says. “Slight increase in prices and colder temperatures. We’re guessing around a 5% or so increase in total bills.” That estimate is taking into account shutdowns due to hurricanes, snowstorms and other severe weather. McDowell says Iowans shouldn’t have to worry about any natural gas shortages.

“Supplies are abundant,” McDowell says. “Our storage is nearly full. We’ve got a lot of gas ready to come on the market. If prices go up a little bit more, that gas will be flowing in.” He says the predicted five-percent price hike for natural gas over the season ahead can essentially be attributed to two issues — the forecast for a harsher winter ahead and higher transportation costs.

“Half of the jump is because it’s going to be a little colder,” McDowell says. “The other half is because those are the costs that are incurred when you take gas from the production area to the utility and then from the utility to the customer, those all have costs.” The U-S Census Bureau estimates 67-percent of Iowans use natural gas to heat their homes, 15-percent use electricity, 14-percent use propane, and the rest use wood or fuel oil.

(Radio Iowa)

Three days into the government shutdown, the U-S-D-A has transferred unspent funding from last year to the Women Infants and Children or WIC supplemental food assistance program for the month of October. Jill Lange [LANG], the director of the WIC program for the state, says 66-thousand mothers and children in Iowa receive WIC benefits. “What that means is we are now able to print checks for WIC participants just for the month of October. At this point we are only issuing October because we don’t have any money to go any further out than that,” Lange says.

Checks average about 55-dollars a month, and are usually distributed three months at a time. Recipients will only get their October checks now, and will receive November and December in the mail if the federal shutdown ends before then. Doug Beardsley oversees the WIC program for four southeast Iowa counties and says it isn’t a permanent fix — but he’s staying optimistic the shutdown will end in time.

“Not going to get into the politics of it all, but hopefully members of Congress can sit down and get something worked out so we can get back to doing what we’ve been contracted to do,” Beardsley says. Beardsley says when news got out that the government shutdown had halted WIC, calls poured in from Iowans offering to donate food and infant formula.

(Radio Iowa)

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Google’s newest data center in western Iowa is ready to help the company deliver Internet search results, find directions and save information. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company held an open house Thursday afternoon to show off its second data center in Council Bluffs — just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Neb.

Google says it has invested more than $1.1 billion in its two Council Bluffs data centers and created more than 130 jobs so far. The first one opened in 2009. Google has said it chose Council Bluffs for the centers because it offered relatively cheap electricity and had land and skilled workers available. The company also applied for up to $300 million in tax incentives from Iowa.

Republican Congressman Steve King dismisses the idea the U.S. government will go into default if congress fails to raise the debt limit later this month. Obama Administration officials suggest a debt limit must be raised by October 17th and economists say failure to raise the limit could trigger a massive drop in stock markets around the globe and increase borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

“I don’t think the credit of the United States is going to be collapsed. I think that all this talk about a default has been a lot of demogoguery, a lot of false demogoguery,” King said today on CNN. “We have plenty of money coming in to service the debt. When we stop servicing the debt, then we’d be in default. We’re a long, long ways from that.” During the previous partisan fight in the summer of 2011 over the nation’s debt limit there was a 17 percent drop in the value of blue-chip stocks calculated in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, plus Standard and Poor’s lowered its credit rating for the United States.

“I remember the last time we came up to the debt ceiling deadline and there was all of this talk that the Tea Party was going to collapse the economy,” King said on CNN. “Even though the people that were opposed to increasing the debt ceiling essentially gave in and the debt ceiling was increased, they were still blamed for the effect on the markets.” President Obama has said he will not negotiate on raising the debt limit and it should be a yes or no vote in congress, but Republicans have a growing list of items they want to tack onto a deal, including the go-ahead for the Keystone X-L Pipeline from Canada to Texas and as well as at least a year’s delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act.

“We need to get down to the clear part of this,” King said on CNN. “The American people have rejected ObamaCare. The president is willing to put all of that on the line to save his namesake piece of legislation which I think would go down in history as the largest political tantrum ever.” King made his comments this morning (Thursday) during an appearance on C-N-N’s “New Day” morning show. A group of C-E-Os from some of the nation’s largest financial institutions went to Washington D.C. yesterday (Wednesday) and told reporters failure to raise the debt ceiling would “extremely adverse” damage to the economy.

(Radio Iowa)