Friday Morning Read: Cedar Lake, Abortion Bill, Hawks win, Warm February

Balmy February -  This February was the second warmest in 145 years, with a statewide average temperature of 34 degrees, which is 10 degrees warmer than the normal 24 degrees, said State Climatologist Harry Hillaker. Mike Jacobs of Monticello reported seeing his first red-winged blackbird, a reliable harbinger of spring, on Feb. 19, about three weeks ahead of their typical arrival date. Read more about the signs of spring here.

Scraping the lake - A bundled Daniel Cook, a physicist, and Greg Fuhrmann, a geologist, navigated to a dozen predetermined coordinates on the interior of Cedar Lake, anchoring and then twisting a soil auger 2 feet into the lake bottom to draw sediment samples. 'The city wants to take over the property, but they don't want to take over an environmental mess,' Cook said. 'Once you get a phase two, it tells you the what. It doesn't tell you how to clean it up, and it doesn't tell you what your end use is going to be and who's doing the cleanup,' said Jennifer Pratt, Cedar Rapids community development director. 'The important thing is we (the city and Alliant) are both at the table and ready to have the discussion.' Read more about the future of Cedar Lake here.

Abortion bill moves on - A bill that would bar a woman from receiving an abortion after 20 weeks made it through an Iowa Senate committee on Thursday evening. But two other pieces of legislation seeking to limit Iowa women's access to abortion did not survive the session's first funnel deadline. The bill next will go before the full Senate for a vote. Read reaction to this bill and the next steps here.

Hawks burry Badgers - The youngest of the four Bohannon brothers vaulted his team to a victory Thursday night in Madison, Wis., but this time a Bohannon wasn't cheered by the fans in red. As former Badgers Zach and Jason Bohannon watched from behind the Iowa bench, Jordan hit a 3-pointer from the wing with 0:09 left on the clock to give the Iowa men's basketball team a 59-57 victory over No. 21 Wisconsin. Read Bohannon's reactions to the victory, and what it means for the Hawkeyes moving forward.

Quotable - The Inter-Religious Council of Linn County on Thursday worked on a plan to respond to the anti-Semitic acts that have rocked the nation recently.

'We've seen it for the last year-and-a-half through this presidential campaign. It's the hate speech and the scapegoating of other groups,' he said. 'Once they start coming for the Jews, they do start coming for the others, and we've seen that (in history)."

Read about the Linn County Inter-Religious Council's meeting here.