Midwestern United States

For the TV networks, the meat and potatoes of prime time are back on the menu. After abandoning America's heartland and failing in recent years to create a successful sitcom, ABC on Wednesday will try to revive its legacy of strong family comedies with "The Middle." Set in the fictional town of Orson, Ind., "The Middle" stars Patricia Heaton as a harried mom trying her best to hold down a job selling cars while taking care of her husband and their three mostly ordinary kids -- even if that means serving them still-frozen waffles.

As temperatures plummeted into the single digits across the Midwest on Saturday, residents reached for their thermal underwear, worried about the possibility of frozen pipes and huddled indoors as an Arctic wind chill made it feel like 20 below zero. In some spots, it felt even colder. As winds and cold air blew in from the northwest, the National Weather Service reported that parts of Minnesota and North Dakota were hit with wind-chill temperatures as low as 35 below.

A winter storm blanketed the middle of the country on Friday, leaving residents to dig their cars and front walkways out from beneath mountains of powder, while roads from the Great Lakes to Texas turned dangerously icy. Hundreds of schools were closed in southeast and southern Michigan, where as much as 5 inches of snow covered the ground. Commuters in St. Louis -- which got at least 8 inches -- struggled to navigate through miles of snarled traffic and fender-benders.

Corn is a key element of the U.S. food supply. It is what dairy cows eat to make milk and hens consume to lay eggs. It fattens cattle, hogs and chickens before slaughter. It makes soda sweet. As the building block of ethanol, it is now also a major component of auto fuel. And that may signal trouble ahead.

A gorgeous, sunny day didn't fool dozens of residents as they packed their belongings into trucks Thursday and high-tailed it to high ground. The rising, churning waters of the Meramec River foretold disaster: By today, the river's projected all-time crest of more than 31 feet was expected to send floodwaters gushing through the low-lying downtown, swamping the streets and floors of dozens of houses in this hamlet southwest of St. Louis.

After I'd lived in California for a while, my friends in the Midwest wanted to know what was different out here. I hated to break it to them, but I didn't find Southern Californians all that different from Midwesterners. Nor did day-to-day life seem that much more expensive, given that money spent on Midwestern winters -- such as on heating bills, heavy clothes, snow tires -- was money kept in the Californian's pocket. Cable TV offered the same shows. But there was one huge difference.

The tornadoes that ripped through the Midwest and South over the weekend killed about two dozen people, officials said Monday, making 2008 the deadliest year so far for twisters in a decade. According to the National Weather Service, 96 people have lost their lives in a year that has seen an unusual number of storms. In 1998, 115 had perished by May 11.

Severe thunderstorms packing large hail and tornadoes rumbled across the nation's midsection Sunday, killing at least eight people and damaging dozens of homes, authorities said. Iowa Homeland Security administrator David L. Miller said seven of the dead were killed by a tornado in northeast Iowa -- five from Parkersburg, 80 miles northeast of Des Moines, and two from nearby New Hartford. At least 50 injuries were reported. "Occasionally we have a death, but we have warning system. Seven deaths.

Water from the swollen Mississippi River surged over more than 10 levees Thursday, flooding huge swaths of Missouri farmland as thousands of volunteers continued to pile sandbags in a desperate bid to protect their communities. The efforts brought mixed results in Winfield, a rural and commuter city of 1,200 about an hour north of St. Louis.

After the great floods of 1993 swamped this tiny town in eastern Iowa, Mike Luck begged the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help protect it from future disasters. Corps officials responded that this community of fewer than 700 residents probably would have to chip in more than $1 million to help build the federally engineered levee system it sought, the former mayor recalled.