We blame him when we get dumped on with snow and call him a liar when it rains when he said it would be sunny.

But that’s what comes with the job title says WDIO chief meteorologist Justin Liles. He’s been forecasting the Northland for 14 years and he’s learned a thing or two along the way, like how Lake Superior influences the weather in the strangest ways.

In this episode, Liles recalls some of his favorite obscure weather events, shares how he works with the big lake to provide more accurate forecasts, and lets us know if winter is indeed over.

In 2018, the St. Louis County Rescue Squad responded to over 400 emergency calls, 73 of which were missing persons cases.

“It’s very easy to get lost,” said this week’s guest, Captain Rick Slatten, about St. Louis County.

Slatten leads the 66-person volunteer squad made up of engineers, OR docs, funeral directors and college students all responding to their “inner Saint Bernard.” He shares the origin story of the squad, which was started by his father in 1958, recalls a few of his more memorable missions, and gives us a few pointers so we don’t become a person that needs rescuing.  

"We are all just people," says our guest Duluth Mayor Emily Larson on this week's episode.

It's a theme she keeps referring to when talking about people's opinions about the city's search for a new flag, or their opinions about women in leadership roles, or their opinions with her end of year column. 

We explore those opinions, in which we get an apology out of Brady, and get to know Mayor Larson better with some more trivial conversation, like her idea to measure the temperature only in "feels like" units. 

When she first moved to the Twin Ports, Jessica McCarthy said it was really easy to find drugs. All she had to do was one loop around town and in about a half an hour she had access to opioids.

Now the opioid technician with the Duluth Police Department, McCarthy is tasked with getting overdose victims immediate interventions.

This week on the podcast, we learn more about McCarthy’s job,  the opioid crisis in the Northland, and her own struggles with addiction.