Top Stories from NCPR

Mitch Lee travels all around the Adirondacks as a professional storyteller. He says he addresses audiences ranging from 60 to 1,000 people. Sometimes he gets a free lunch out of it, or a stay at an extravagant hotel.

A SUNY Potsdam alum is returning to campus Monday to show a new documentary that sounds the alarm about endangered forest elephants in central Africa. The elephants are threatened by logging of their habitat but also because poachers kill them for the illegal ivory trade.

Water levels along the Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River are expected to keep rising this coming week as rain continues. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday he was directing state agencies to prepare for possible flooding along Lake Ontario.

Gov. Cuomo plans to close three state prisons this year, putting many in the North Country on edge. The region has already seen a handful of correctional facilities close, including the one in Chateaugay in Franklin County.

Upstate New York will see expanded access to high-speed broadband in the next two years.

The state Attorney General’s office says it’s broken up two drug rings that traffic heroin, cocaine, and opioids into St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties.

Conditions will be rainy, breezy, and colder this weekend. Despite trailheads barren of snow in the High Peaks, deep rotten snow remains at higher elevations, and Saturday night temperatures are expected to reach into the lower 30s, with summit temperatures only in the 20s this weekend, with wind chills in the single digits.

Water levels in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River are higher than normal for this time of year. With rain in this weekend’s forecast, those levels are expected to keep rising.