It looks like another smoky summer for parts of the U.S. due to Canadian wildfires.
If you're one of the frustrated people in the northern parts of the U.S. asking why Canada just lets its fires burn? Minnesota Pollution Control Agency meteorologist Matt Taraldsen says it's because there's typically no threat to lives and property since they're often in remote, unpopulated areas.
"There's no easy way to get people in there," he says. "If you put people out in the middle of nowhere to fight these fires, they cannot come back to a city or something, to fight a fire that would start and would threaten lives and property. So that's a big part of the problem."
Taraldsen adds Canada often has hundreds of remote wildfires burning at the same time, and while smoke will likely drift south into parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and even parts of the Northeast again this summer, we shouldn't have as many air quality alert days as last year which was one of the worst years for smoke in recent memory.
"Things have been good up in Canada," Taraldsen adds. "They've got a lot of snow this past year, and it's been slowly melting. So that will really help kind of mitigate the risk for wildfires in the short term. But with an El Niño pattern expected, it's likely to be warmer and drier going into the summer, and that will increase the wildfire risk in July and August."
Taraldsen says the main culprits for wildfires are persistent drought, extreme heat, and insects the damage and weaken trees.
Recent years have increased the chances for poor air in Minnesota among a number of other states, driven mainly by wildfires. Those wildfires are becoming larger and breakouts more common due to a changing, and warming, climate according to data from NASA.
Minnesota’s Air Quality Index, which measures how concentrated pollutants are in the air, reached a record high in summer 2021. Wildfire smoke pushed the index level above 200 for the first time, leading to purple (201-300 AQI, “very unhealthy”) and maroon (301+ AQI, “hazardous”) color codes. That had never happened in the state since those have been measured.
These codes present a risk of health effects for everyone, not just people who are sensitive to air quality.
Wildfire danger is expected to increase across much of the western United States in the coming months, while other parts of the country could face periods of heightened risk amid worsening drought and summer heat. The current U.S. Drought Monitor shows incredible swaths of the U.S. under moderate or severe drought, stretching from coast to coast.
While Upper Midwest and Great Lakes states have been spared the worst of the drought conditions, dry areas across the western U.S. and into Canada could certainly lead to major wildfires and more smoke drifting through those states. When winds align with larger blazes, smoke can create a hazy sky and reduce air quality in areas hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
A smoky sky can also reduce temperatures by a few degrees compared to smoke-free conditions, even if the smoke is high up in the atmosphere.
The El Niño pattern which Taraldsen mentions is developing and will certainly begin flexing its influence on the weather pattern later this year and into 2027. The large-scale climate pattern is linked to ocean temperatures near the equator of the Pacific Ocean. When sea surface temperature anomalies over a particular area of the Pacific are at least 0.5 of a degree Celsius (0.9 of a degree Fahrenheit) above long-term historical averages, it becomes an El Niño year.
El Niño is forecast to strengthen and could evolve into a rare "super El Niño" later in 2026 when it could have bigger impacts on the weather across the United States in the final months of 2026 and the start of 2027.
