Stuff You Should Know - What happens to abandoned mines?

Episode Date: August 23, 2012

Did you know there are as many as 500,000 abandoned mines in the US, but the federal government knows where only 30,000 of them are? Learn about these places go from money pit to death trap when mine companies simply walk away. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this makes it sound fishin' on. I just had some of my notes mixed up, like criminal records was stuffed in the middle of this one. Like wouldn't that be funny if I was talking about abandoned

minds and then just like a robot was like, and if you have a DUI, you can call your local police shop and get that expunged. Yeah, I think that's bad advice. Well, now I'm just saying. Do not ever call the police unless it's an emergency. You're right. Chuck. Yes. How are you doing? Good. Three today, huh? Yeah, day before a holiday even. In fact, the office is closed right now, and we're still working. I know. It's like crickets outside. Yep. And someone threw a spear at me when I stuck my head out to go to the bathroom. Good. That was his assignment. Yeah. So, Chuck. Yes. If I may take it down a notch or two. Okay. Have you ever heard of a guy named Taylor Crane? No. She's a kid. No. Taylor is a kid who was 16 years old when he died. Okay. He was on a tour

of Mexico with his parents. New Mexico or Mexico? Mexico. Mexico. Old Mexico. And he was on a tour. I didn't realize he's existed, but of abandoned haciendas and mines. So it's basically like an urban exploration tour of old Mexico. Gotcha. And they were at an old mine site. The tour group was, and Taylor was apparently playing tag and jumped up on a low wall. And apparently on the other side of that was a thousand foot mine shaft, which fell into a thousand feet, 10 feet across. Geez. Wide open, a thousand feet down. They had a lot of trouble getting to them to recover them. Wow. Because there's so much lead and arsenic at the bottom that it was really difficult to breathe. To get down there to get them. Wow. So you think like, wow, that's really crazy that Mexico has

these open mines. Mine blowing as it is. Mexico is not the only place. As a matter of fact, here in the States, we have something on the scale of 500,000 abandoned mines. That's the high end. Yeah. But the low end even is still, I think, like 300,000 abandoned mines. Abandoned mines. Probably two of the most dangerous words you can put together. Yeah. And they're all over the place. The U.S. is lousy with them. Yeah. About 30 people die in the United States every year from accidents involving abandoned mines. And I did a little looking. Yeah, I did too. Apparently, they include quarries. Yeah. And most of these are drownings. Yeah. Because a quarry either has water or an abandoned mine shaft. You know, they'll pump out water to work in it. And then when they're done,

it fills back up with water. So some say crazy scuba divers will try and scuba dive these things. My dad was actually certified in an old marble quarry in Toledo. Really? And to be certified, you had to go down to a school bus at the bottom of this quarry. Wow. You had to dive down, go into the school bus and grab something from it. It was like right inside. And then bring it back up and they'd be like, okay, you're certified. Your dad did that? Yeah. That's pretty awesome. I'm trying to picture that. I can't imagine anything more creepy than having to go into a school bus at the bottom of a filled quarry. No, I'm just trying to picture your dad like all, you know, scuba diving and adventure. Oh, yeah. He had like a buzz cut and more like a big watch and everything.

Yeah. He was, uh, I guess anytime you're older and you meet someone's father when they're a little older, it's hard to imagine them as young because I didn't know him back then. Yeah. But I'd picture him on the couch. Oh, no, huh? Yeah. No, he was, uh, he carried a spear gun everywhere. He went with him. Really? That's awesome. All right. So, um, sadly, like I said, about 30 people die each year. Many of them are drownings. I think number two on the list is ATV accidents, which doesn't surprise me because too long on ATV on some, you know, random thinking you're in the middle of nowhere place and all of a sudden the bottom falls out. Literally. Yeah. Um, yeah, those were the top two far and away that I came across too. But since 2001, apparently 227 people have died in the

United States because of accidents involving abandoned mines. I saw one in 2008. These two guys were, uh, trying to get a former gold mine going again because they thought there was still gold down there and they were pumping out water with a, uh, some sort of machine with a generator and they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Yeah. That's, that's another, I think it's way down on the list. It's like a distant third, but, but I think it's, it's, um, being overcome, unable to breathe asphyxiation. That's the word I'm looking for. By bringing in your own thing or just by the toxic chemicals down there, toxic chemicals or, um, carbon monoxide or oxygen depletion in general right from people either trying to get old ones started up or more likely adventuring,

checking out abandoned mines. Let's go ahead and give a tip to people because we like to encourage the urban explorers, which you know, we've done a podcast on that, but man, you don't need to be hanging around abandoned mines. No, they very, very dangerous. Yes. I mean, that's just so mind bogglingly dangerous. Yeah. Just resist the urge. I know like I have that urge too because I love the urban exploration. If I saw a hole in the ground, I would want to go check it out, but it's not a good place to be, not a good thing to do. So what's crazy is we said like up to 500,000 abandoned mines and these are just the mines, not mine features. So say every mine has several mine features, say an adit, which is a vertical shaft or I'm sorry, a horizontal shaft.

And you've got a vertical shaft like the one that poor Taylor Crane fell into. You have all these different mine features on up to 500,000 mines. The crazy thing is, is as of February 2011, the Bureau of Land Management, which is tasked with finding these abandoned mines, has only found about 31,000 of them. That means that there's possibly 469,000 abandoned mines in the United States that no one has on any map. True. But like on the good side, they're trying to find them now. Yeah. In 2008, they only had 18,000 of them. So in that span of three years, they found another 13,000. I had 12,000 in 2008. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, even better than. Yeah. Yeah. And I think 25% of those have been remediated, have pending reclamation, or they say aren't a

danger. They say. They say. So that's just the physical dangers. Yeah, there's two kinds. There's physical dangers and environmental dangers. And I think I guess it's of the ones they found. They said 20 to 30% have physical hazards and 5 to 10% have environmental hazards. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Which, you know, it's not a ton, but 20% is pretty dangerous. Well, a physical hazard is insidious for the local, just the local people who are walking around it. Sure, like falling in. Yeah, or maybe caving in. And by the way, I found out that any mine feature that is like a hole in the ground or even like if there's a depression in the ground because a mine collapsed some, they're called glory holes. Did you know that? That was almost a spit take,

wasn't it? Yeah, that's not true. I swear to God it is. Wow. I saw a sign today of an abandoned mine called the glory hole mine. Well, that's quite a name. Yeah. Good for them. Mine tailings you talk about, and this is some of the environmental hazards. And these can actually be physical hazards too if you're living nearby. These are the remnants of what was going on there, of the mineral, and often it can be very toxic. And then that can either be harmful to you or it can run off into the water and be harmful to people, you know, downriver. That was my point, is things like, like edits and other mine features. Yeah. They're dangerous if you're walking around the mine. Environmental hazards of a mine can be very far reaching. Yeah. Because in

very much the same way that acid rain is produced from like smoke stacks, these mines can produce acid rain. And they can also produce acid groundwater when sulfide, sulfide minerals and oxygen combined with water produces acidic groundwater that can pollute an entire water system downstream. And then also Chuck, there's mercury tailings are a big problem, especially with gold mines. Oh, I'm sure. So, you know, like if you take mercury and take gold and put them together, mercury absorbs the gold. And you get a rainbow. Right. Exactly. A deadly rainbow. And it makes what's called an amalgam. And then later on, so you have like, you can take a little gold flex or whatever. And now they're like highly portable, stable little things of mercury.

Uh-huh. And then you take them somewhere else and you can burn the mercury off and the mercury will vaporize and just the gold is left. Well, the problem is, is that mercury then immediately contaminates wherever you just burned it off and it has the atmosphere and everything. But those kind of tailings are especially problematic in all gold mines too. And does that end up in gold slugger bottles? Probably. Is that where they get it? I don't know. I hope they're not putting mercury, formerly mercury gold amalgam in the gold slugger. No, the people at gold slugger wouldn't do that. So, Josh, if this is such a problem, why wouldn't these companies clean up their mine sites? It seems like a no-brainer to me. You're there, you do the work, you close it down,

you clean it up. Right. Make sure it's safe for everybody. That's how you do it now. Yes. Supposedly. It was not the case until 1977 for about 200 years. Crazy. People mined, even more than that, people mined in the United States. Willy-nilly. However they wanted. Yeah. And they would, they would say, well, this mine's used up. I don't need it any longer. I'm walking away. Well, the quick answer to my question, which I will know. I thought I had answered. No, is money. That's the real reason because it's really expensive to clean up your mine site. If you're a mining operation and you can pre, what, 1977? You can just fold up shop and leave. Why would you spend money to clean it up

if you were a company without like an ethical compass and a moral compass? Because, you know, it's going to hit your bottom line. So, screw it. Let's just leave it. You know, I can't help but feel like you set me up by asking me that question and expecting the short answer because I've never given a short answer. Well, that is the short answer. Sure. 2006 Congressional testimony said it would cost $72 billion to clean up only the hard rock mines like the hard rock cafes. $72 billion. Well, the Bureau of Land Management, which we said is responsible for finding these mines and for reclaiming them basically, they divide mines that they have to deal with into three categories. There's hard rock,

which is like gold, silver, minerals, iron, maybe. Yeah. I don't think they deal with iron. And then there's coal mines and then uranium mines. Gotcha. Well, I saw the East Coast, they had a map of where a lot of these abandoned mines are and there's a lot of them on the East Coast and there were, I think, a lot of the coal mines. Oh, yeah. Like there's Centralea, Pennsylvania, which we talked about before, is an abandoned town with a coal seam burning underneath. Oh, yeah, that's right. Creepy. So they abandoned the mines over time. Land records and lease records were lost basically. It's like a reverse foreclosure. Yeah, pretty much. And so in the end, like no one's on the hook, no one knows many times who these mines originally,

like who was responsible for this to begin with. Yeah. And even if they do know, the miners can be like, do you have documentation that says they're on that mine? Yeah. And the government goes, no. And the mine owner says, see you. Or the other little loophole, you wrote this, right? Yeah. That you pointed out, which was if you have gone through bankruptcy, then you can't be held liable. That is no longer true. Oh, is that not true? Yeah. Yeah. I was happy to find that there is, there's, you now have to post a bond basically, as a mining company, from what I understand from research I did very recently, that you have to post a bond, kind of like a fidelity bond, that is money you pay in upfront that you get back if your mining operation successfully reclaims

the land. If you don't reclaim it, if reclamation isn't like the end of your mine, or you go bankrupt, that money is still there to pay for reclamation. Is he going to correct the article? I think I should. I think you should. People need to know that. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss

you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist, Danielle Morton, in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret

city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. Here's a little thing, too, called the Clean Water Act, which obviously you're going to be

violating that if you're letting your toxins from your mind leak out into the groundwater. Right. Big penalties. But as you pointed out that in 2006, there was legislation to exempt people from prosecution who were actually trying to clean up their minds. Yeah. Like, I want to go clean up my mind and we're going to exempt you as long as you weren't the people who started the mind to begin with. Right. From, I guess, exempt from the Clean Water Act? Yes, from polluting because one of the big problems with tailings in a lot of cases, just removing them. Yeah. Is going to, some's going to slip into the watershed and if it's from, say, a uranium mine, well, it's radioactive and your water's radioactive and you have to pay a huge fine.

Well, is it better to leave it, I wonder? It's better to not get any into the watershed. Well, but can you clean it up without doing that? Yes. I feel like what the government has been doing, the Bureau of Land Management does, and they have a division called the Abandoned Mine Lands. Yeah. They basically just build a structure around it, kind of like what they did with Chernobyl, but on a much smaller scale, where it's basically like, this is going to stay here for a little while. Right. We'll just put this around it until it's not radioactive anymore. Okay. That's the impression I have of what they're doing, at least with radioactive stuff. Well, that legislation did not pass, though. No, it didn't. Which seems like it would discourage people from trying to

clean these things up, right? Yeah, but I also read testimony from this group called Earthworks, and they were lobbying against that loophole, saying it was overly broad. Oh, really? That basically, like if you just picked up a little bit of litter, whatever, you were automatically exempt from the Clean Water Act. Gotcha. So it could be used to nefarious ends by amoral people. Well, you mentioned the Abandoned Mine Lands program under the Bureau of Land Management. They get funding roughly in the neighborhood of $12 to $15 million a year. And, you know, we said earlier, it takes $70 billion to clean up, I think, just the Hard Rock site. So they're doing the best they can over an eight-year period. They cleaned up more than 3,000 mines,

which is awesome. But when you've got potentially 500,000 out there, it's a little scary to think about. So to remediate a mine, you have to address the physical stuff and the environmental stuff. You have to take care of the tailings, piles. You have to prevent any more acid ground water from being produced. You have to disassemble and carry off any old machinery, any old buildings, maybe. And you have to cover up entrances. But covering up a mine shaft, a glory hole, as it's called in the industry, is not quite as cut and dry as you think. You just put a huge heavy metal slab over it. Sure. Problem is, is when you build a mine, in a lot of cases, you've disturbed a bat population. Yeah. When you abandon the mine, you basically are leaving

this bat population with an awesome little place to live. Yeah, a playground, if you will. Exactly. Now, bats are really, really essential to our comfort and happiness in that the average bat can kill something like 600 mosquitoes an hour when it really wants to, if it's feeling frisky. So we want to keep bats around. They're already being decimated by white-nosed fungus, right? Yeah. So people who are reclaiming abandoned mines have figured out that there's ways that you can keep humans out, but let bats in and out. And so they put on bat couplas on vertical shafts, which is basically just like a little roof that has slats to let the bats fly in and out. Yeah, that makes sense. And a bat gate is virtually the same thing, except it goes into like an

ad-it. Bat gate. Yeah. Bat coupler. I think it's a great idea, because then you're not going to find a kid down in there. No. You're not disturbing the population of the bats. Unless the kid is the size of a bat. And even still, why is he not like... Bat boy. That's his problem. Well, bat boy's fine. Yeah. So the EPA started something called the Superfund, which basically means mining companies now pay into this huge bank account to cover costs of future cleanups, but that's not enough to meet the needs so taxpayers end up paying for the discrepancies. Yeah. And that'll mind my tax money going toward that. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist in Elm Morton in my podcast, City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop trains. I'm just like stuck on this train. God knows where I'm going to end up and I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom. This community, no one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history,

and the thing we call the American dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you could have this incredible rebirth and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the City of the Rails. Listen to City of the Rails on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts, or cityoftherails.com. So apparently nowadays, since 1977, part of the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund is that if you're a mining company, you're paying a tax basically for every ton of surface coal that you mine, and every ton of underground coal, you're paying 31.5 cents for surface coal and 13.5 cents a ton

for underground mine stuff. And all of that goes into the Superfund to reclaim it. That's not bad. Well, this October, I think, it's going to go down to 12 cents and 28 cents. Times are tough all over for everybody. Yeah, they are. In 1986, Josh, as you point out, the Department of Interior created an award for mining excellence. This is like yard of the month for abandoned mines. In reclamating, I think it's called the Miney Award. All joking aside, it's very cool that they do this because a lot of people are more responsible these days with their mining operations. They're not all bad. Mining is a vital thing. We're not trying to poo-poo that. And then we did,

like with the mountaintop removal coal mining. It came down pretty hard. But a lot of miners these days are pretty responsible, and they are reclaiming this land and going back in and planting vegetation and trying to preserve old buildings and make those into live workspace condos. Exactly what they're doing. Yeah, so that's great. Keep it up is what I say. I agree. And be careful out there, ATV people and rock-corey swimmers. Yeah, if you see a mine, stay away. I believe that's the name of the program. Oh, really? Yeah, stay away. Yeah, it's like those cartoony posters with exclamation points and stuff like that. PSAs, that's what they're called. I think if you do see a mine, go on the internet and look up

reporting abandoned mines, and you will find a way to do it. And that'll be helpful. You'll save some money. Save some taxpayer money if you report a mine yourself. Agreed. If you want to know more about abandoned mines and reclamation and all that stuff, you can type it into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And I said search bars means it's time for you. That's right, Josh. This closes out the trilogy. I'll go and start out with Donna Fessler. My husband always wants to call my beef vegetable soup a stew, but it is broth-based. I don't argue. And basically, she's asking about this. My recommendation, Donna, is to go check out the podcast Judge John Hodgman. I was going to say the same thing. Because he has a full podcast on,

I believe, Chili, Chili's Childers, Stews and Soops and the Differences, right? That's the first one, wasn't it? It was pretty early on. Judge John will break it all down for you. Nice plug, Chuck. Thank you. Ryan Taylor, question, what time is it? A, hammer time, B, time to make the donuts, or C, beer o'clock? Time to make the donuts. Beer o'clock. We got one from Jeremy Glover. Did either of you grow up watching Andy Griffith's show? I think he means The Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, I certainly did. I did, too. Henry runs. Is there anybody, yeah, same here. Is there anybody who is alive today that didn't grow up watching it? Yeah, well, he's asking that because Andy Griffith died today. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know he's still alive. He was, till today. Wow,

that's, well, he had quite a run. Yeah, he was 86 years old, good full life as Sheriff Andy Taylor and Matt Locke. And was that it? Those are his two big characters, didn't he? I have a third. Those were the two big ones. Was any like the landlord on Three's Company for a little while? No, I don't think so. Tanya Chavez, it is my anniversary. Can you do a quick shout out to my very patient husband, Abe Franklin? It'd be a fun surprise. All right, Tanya. I think it's Tanya. Happy anniversary to you and Abe. Happy anniversary, Tanya, Tanya and Abe. Oh, here's a good one. Brandon Nichols, who would you most like to punch in the face? That's sort of like the fight club question. Who would you fight? Who would I most like to punch in the face? Boy, that'd be a good

one. I think myself many times. Really? Yeah. That's very much like fight club. Actually, I got someone else, but I can't say. I think you know who it is. Oh, yeah. I'd like to punch him in the face. Yeah. You got anyone? I'm not saying anything. So that was kind of a cop out. Yeah. Vitaly says, would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck? I love these questions. One horse-sized duck. I'd go for the one horse-sized duck because you get like a sharpened stick in its neck. It's over and done with. It's kind of like that garage full of guided missiles up in space. Yeah. You take one out, you take 10 out. If you got like 100 duck-sized horses coming at you, they're going to get the best of you. Yeah, plus that's just creepy, man. Can you

imagine 100 like one foot tall horses coming after you? I find the horse-sized duck creepier. Yeah, I don't mind that. That's some good eating, too. Oh, yeah. Micah? Mia? Mia. Mia Paul Cannell says how. Mia or Maya? Maya says, how is Atlanta really quality of life? Would you recommend it? I would. I love Atlanta. I'm from here and I moved back here for a reason. Josh, do you like Atlanta? Sure. Atlanta's great. Atlanta's great. Robert Casey is jerry as smoking hot as we think she is is and more. My friend, that's all I'm going to say about that. Have you ever gotten a threatening listener mail from Nathaniel Yeager? No, nothing threatening. I have. Really? Yeah. Like physically threatened? No, menacing. How about that? I've gotten a couple of little crazy ones, but never

menacing. You care to share? No. Okay. I don't want to set anybody off. How about one more? Okay, let's see. Why is cilantro so divisive from Heidi Wells? Good question, Heidi Wells. That is a good one. Cilantro, the herb, also known as coriander, or Chinese celery, I believe, in some quarters or cilantro. Yeah. That's pretty good. Thank you. It's divisive because it strikes different people's tongues differently. It's really big time, right? Some people, cilantro is a glorious herb, including me. And me. I love cilantro. Me too. To other people, it tastes very much like soap. Yeah, my friend says that. And there is actually, if you're interested, a video on WebMD that addresses this question. And if you watch very

closely, the filmmaker who is a friend of mine, who I know through you, me, put in a moment where he takes a thing of palm olive and puts it over a taco. And it happens just for a second. But it's pretty brilliant, once you... It was just funny looking. Yeah. It's like, did he just put soap on a taco? Yeah. There you go. Well, here's what I have to say. I feel sorry for people who have that taste reaction. Oh, I do too. Because cilantro to me is one of the great, great things in food and some drinks. Yes. I put a little cilantro and margaritas from time to time. So good. It's really nice. And a couple slices of jalapeno. Yeah. All right. I'm hungry and thirsty. I am too, man. Let's go eat some guacamole. Yay. If you have questions for Chuck and I, you can tweet

to us at S.Y.S.K. podcast. You can join us on facebook.com. Or you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's today's Fortnite weather report.

iHeartland has been hit by a major blizzard. The snow has turned iHeartland and Fortnite into a winter wonderland with new festive games, including a winter themed escape room, a holiday obstacle course, ice skating, hidden holiday gifts and more. Look out for upcoming special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month along with scavenger hunts and new how fan are huge challenges. So embrace the holidays at iHeartland and Fortnite. Head to iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland today.