According to the Bismarck Tribune, the number of baby births is setting new records at hospitals in central and western North Dakota. Hospitals are reportedly constructing new rooms and increasing staff to accommodate the current baby boom.

Western Minnesota got a taste of wind storms that swept through North and South Dakota Wednesday and Thursday. Winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour blew trucks off highways, fanned wildfires, and knocked down power lines.

A Rochester company is gearing to send nearly 150 homes to the oil fields this year. Creative Modular Concepts owner Dale Jech tells the Post Bulletin, "Labor there is simply too expensive. Most of the houses now are coming from Indiana. They're even buying some in Florida and shipping them to North Dakota."

The new survey of Oil Patch residents bears out the old saying that money can’t buy happiness. Sixty percent of longtime northwest North Dakota residents say they have benefited economically from the oil boom, but the majority say their quality of life has not improved, according to the report by the University of North Dakota.

Gov. Dalrymple says if Minnesota energy regulators require utilities to pay more to burn coal it will hamper North Dakota's growing lignite industry, which already provides a large share of Minnesota's electric power. Regulators here imposed higher costs on coal-burners as part of a plan to require utilities to generate a quarter of their energy from renewable sources by 2024.

An oil boom has brought great prosperity – but also great amounts of waste – to North Dakota, investigative reporting by ProPublica reveals. Data obtained by ProPublica show oil companies are spilling and dumping drilling waste onto North Dakota's land and into its waterways with increasing regularity. Many dumpings along roads and in pits go unreported, state regulators acknowledge.

The state’s director of mineral resources says oil development could push North Dakota's population to a seven figure number. The oil boom has already created thousands of jobs and that is expected to continue. The 2011 Census estimate put North Dakota's population at 683,932.

Boardings at airports at airports across North Dakota are up 22 percent in the first six months of 2012 compared to the same period last year, Forum Communications reports. Boardings at airports near the oil boom in western North Dakota have skyrocketed -- up 73 percent in Dickinson, 62 percent in Minot and 41 percent in Williston.