w/ Ric Hanson

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An accident early this morning on Interstate 29 in Pottawattamie County resulted in one person being sent to the hospital with critical injuries. According to the Omaha World-Herald, the wreck happened at around 3:45-a.m., just north of Council Bluffs. The vehicle ended-up in a ditch. One person in the vehicle was transported to the Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha. No other information is currently available.

ORANGE CITY, Iowa (AP) – An Ohio-based company has told employees that its northwest Iowa meat plant in Orange City will close by the end of the year. Shuttering the AdvancePierre Foods plant will eliminate an estimated 300 jobs. Mayor Les Douma says the plant manager told him about the closing late Tuesday. Douma says the plant has “a great economic impact on the entire region.”  The company supplies meat products and sandwiches to food-service, school, retail, club store, vending and convenience store markets.

A message relayed through the Emergency Alert System Tuesday morning notified residents of Pottawattamie County about a phone outage that affected their 9-1-1 land line service. According to the Pottawattamie County Emergency Management Agency, the incident was caused by a phone company problem. Residents of Carson, Oakland, and Treynor were affected by the phone system outage that prevented them from dialing 9-1-1 for a little more than two-hours. Cellular phone customers were not affected by the outage.

Persons without a cell phone and in need of 9-1-1 service, were asked to go to their local fire station, where persons on-duty could contact the proper authorities. Land-line 9-1-1 service was restored by around 1:15-p.m., Tuesday.

HORNICK, Iowa (AP) – Residents in the western Iowa town of Hornick have returned to their homes after a fertilizer fire at a co-op building.  The fire at the Western Iowa Cooperative broke out Tuesday afternoon. The Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office was concerned about air quality and residents’ safety and urged the evacuation as a precaution.  Co-op general manager John Bender says a phosphorus-based fertilizer is stored in the building but the building was 90 percent empty, however. Fire officials say the fire was under control within an hour. No injuries were reported.  Hornick, which has about 220 residents, is around 30 miles southeast of Sioux City.

(Correction to earlier version of this story – updated 8:50-a.m. 5/2/12)

The Audubon County Board of Supervisors have set May 9th as the date to appoint an interim County Treasurer, to fill the vacancy created by the death Sunday, of Audubon County Treasurer Connie Johnson. Auditor Lisa Fredericksen told KJAN News, per Iowa Code section 69.3, the Treasurer’s Office was temporarily closed once officials learned of Johnson’s passing. Fredericksen came into the office and took possession of the keys and books, and count the money on hand.

The Board of Supervisors held a special meeting Tuesday to decide whether to hold a special election to fill the position, or to appoint. They chose to appoint a person to the job. The notice will be posted in Friday’s edition of the local paper in Audubon. Fredericksen says the notice needs to be in the paper no less than four days and no more than 20, so the soonest an appointment can be made is next Wednesday, May 9th, at 9-a.m.

In the meantime, Fredericksen said so she doesn’t handle both sides of money transactions, the Board approved Deputy Treasurer Deb Campbell and Fredericksen going to the bank together, to handle any financial transfers, so their is no appearance of impropriety. The Supervisors passed a resolution to allow Fredericksen to become bonded until an appointment is made next Wednesday. She has custody of the office until such time as an appointment is made.

All Audubon County offices will be closed on Thursday, May 3rd,  so that County employees who choose to do so, may attend Johnson’s funeral. Connie Johnson was 53-years old. Kessler Funeral Home in Exira is in charge of the funeral arrangements.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

State Climatologist Harry Hillaker says the just completed month of April helped push the state to a new weather record. “For the first third of the year temperature wise, running about seven-point-four degrees above normal ,for the first four months of 2012. Preliminarily that would be the warmest first third of the year on record — about three-tenths of a degree above 1878 — which had been the previous warmest January through April period in Iowa,” Hillaker explains.

April was the seventh straight month were we’ve seen the average temperature end above the norm.Hillaker says April averaged about three degrees above normal, which made it end up just under one degree above the average temperature in March. “So if it seems like this month was not much warmer than the previous (month), that would be correct, they are both very similar,” Hillaker says. There was some April fooling going on by Mother Nature when it came to the temperatures, as Hillaker says the month started warmer than it finished. 

“The first half of the month was averaging about six degrees warmer than usual. The second half of April was slightly cooler than normal, so overall not really much trend as we went through the month, usually you kind of expect things to be the other way around,” the climatologist says. Hillaker says April provided another possible record when you compare the temperatures from the eastern cities to the temperatures in March.

“One interesting little tidbit for what it’s worth, most of eastern Iowa actually averaged warmer temperatures for the month of March than it did for the month of April,” Hillaker says. “Places like Waterloo, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, the Quad Cities, were slightly warmer in March than they were in April. Most likely that’s the first time that’s ever happened.” The numbers show April was wetter than average. Hillaker says the statewide average was three-point-nine-nine inches of precipitation in April, which is about one-half inch more than the average for April. He says that ranks it as the 31st wettest April in 140 years of records, and it is very similar to the April totals the last three years. Hillaker says the first third of the year saw about two-thirds of an inch more rainfall than we usually see, but he says it’s about what we’ve seen over the same period the last few years. It ranks as the 29th wettest first four months of the year on the state record books. There is a possibility that we also saw the first snowless April since 1890. Hillaker says there was a report of sleet on April 28th, which is technically considered snow.

In Atlantic, the average high for the month of April was 67.7-degrees. The average low was 40.2. Rainfall for the month amounted to 4.18-inches. The normal average high for the month is 62.6, while the normal monthly low is 37. Rainfall in April normally averages 3.01-inches.

(Dar Danielson/Radio Iowa, & Ric Hanson/KJAN)

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports the arrest Tuesday afternoon, of 55-year old James Anthony Piunti, of Red Oak. Piunti was taken into custody on a warrant for Violation of his Probation, on an original charge of Indecent Contact with a Child. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail awaiting transportation to Pottawattamie County.

An Adams County woman received a rude awakening after she fell asleep at the wheel of her car, which then entered a ditch and came to an abrupt stop against a concrete culvert. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office the accident happened at around 10:40-a.m. Tuesday, on Highway 34. Officials say 66-year old Carolyn Ann Fritz, of Corning,  was traveling west on the highway in a 1999 Dodge Neon, when she fell asleep. The car traveled about 120-yards while in the north ditch, before hitting a concrete culvert, and sustaining disabling damage. No citations were issued at the time of the crash.