Lake Effect Spotlight

A bitter cold snap is gripping southeast Wisconsin. Many of us are under an extreme cold warning or watch with temperatures creeping into the negative teens. Weather-related emergencies can happen at any time. That’s why it’s especially important to be prepared. 

Katie Rousonelos is the public information officer with Wisconsin Emergency Management. She joins Lake Effect’s Sam Woods to share how to prepare for winter emergencies and how to stay safe during this cold snap. 

We now have a snapshot of the health and well-being of Milwaukee residents. 

The Milwaukee Health Department has released its 2025 Community Health Assessment, the first since 2022 when the pandemic was still looming large as a public health concern. This new report finds that violence, drug abuse and housing all play a role in whether we can live healthy lives.  

Ali Tahler-Reed and Dominique Hyatt-Oates of the health department join WUWM’s Katherine Kokal to look at what’s in the report and how it’ll be used. 

Milwaukee Public School leaders learned last week that the state was releasing the final portion of money it withheld in 2024. The money has been held up after the district missed financial reporting deadlines. The financial woes led to the resignation of former Superintendent Keith Posely. 

Now, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction has released eight million dollars to the district after it submitted all its late financial reports. It marks another major turn for the state’s largest school district as it tries to earn back the trust of the public and state regulators. WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal catches up with MPS’ Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius.

This month, WUWM has been looking at ways that schools are addressing low literacy rates among Milwaukee children. But what about our city’s adults? 

One in four adults in Milwaukee reads at or below a third grade level. Thousands of adults have sought help through free programs offered by Literacy Services of Wisconsin. WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal met with Literacy Services executive director Holly McCoy-Perez at the organization’s new headquarters in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood. They discuss how strengthening reading education for young children can have a snowball effect on future generations. 

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games are coming up in February. Athletes from across the globe will be performing together on the highest platform their sport can reach. It’s an exciting time not just for the athletes who have trained incredibly hard to qualify, but for all of us watching from home. 

In this Winter Olympic Games we have a fellow Wisconsinite to cheer on – Staff Sargent Deedra Irwin. She’s on Team USA competing in the biathlon and currently holds the best placement for an American athlete in the event with her 7th place finish from her Olympic debut in Beijing. 

Irwin is from Pulaski, Wisconsin and is also part of the Army’s World Class Athlete Program. To share more about how she got into the biathlon and her outlook on the upcoming Olympics, she joins Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakowski.

Every year, Woodland Pattern selects a Milwaukee Youth Poet Laureate through a competition. Last summer, the local non-profit crowned Angela Wang with the literary honor. She's a senior at the University School of Milwaukee and wraps up her service this upcoming May.  

As Youth Poet Laureate, Wang shares her poetry across the city and helps guide other young poets through writing workshops. Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez talks with Wang about what inspires her poems and what’s she learned in the year-long role. 

Starting this week, some bus riders across Milwaukee County will need to wait longer for their rides. Especially on the weekends. That’s because the Milwaukee County Transit System reduced service to some routes to help deal with a multimillion dollar budget deficit.  

Regular fares also went up by 75 cents at the beginning of this year. To learn more about the changes, WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal is joined by Jesus Ochoa and Brian DeNeeve Brian with MCTS. 

Massive data centers are coming to Wisconsin to help power the global boom in artificial intelligence. The data centers will add demand for electricity and water. And this comes after years of declining usage of both in Wisconsin. 

So how might that impact Wisconsin’s electricity and water infrastructure? To find out, WUWM’s Maayan Silver is joined by Tyler Byrnes. He’s senior research associate for the Wisconsin Policy Forum, which recently released a report on data centers and utilities. 

Lance Armstrong. Elizabeth Holmes. Jay Gatsby. Typically, we shun liars in all forms whether they are politicians, financiers or fictional characters. We tell our kids to never lie, and expect our friends to be truthful, even when it hurts. 

But the Burlington Liars Club is different. Here, lies are celebrated and platformed in an annual contest for who can tell the best lie. 

Truthfully, Tea Krulos is a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine, who wrote about the Burlington Liars Club for this month’s issue. He joins Lake Effect’s Sam Woods to put WUWM’s journalistic integrity to the test, and celebrate the liars among us.  

Data centers are the factories that run the internet. We rely on them every day, for things like sending emails, watching videos and uploading photos. Now, even larger data centers, to help power artificial intelligence, are being proposed and built in Wisconsin. Data centers require millions of gallons of water to operate. Some can consume as much energy as a town. 

Port Washington residents want to recall the city’s mayor over a 15-billion-dollar Vantage data center that’s under construction. Microsoft is building one in Mount Pleasant. 

To learn more about data centers and their environmental impacts, WUWM reporter Eddie Morales is joined by Amy Barrilleaux. She’s the communications director at Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy group.