You’ve certainly noticed and felt the smoky, hazy air across Minnesota this week. It’s due to wildfires burning across southern Canada, and that smoke being blown across our state.
Now, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is extending the air quality warnings until Tuesday of next week. It’s an unprecedented amount of time for Minnesota. The alert includes all of Minnesota.
In fact, there is now a large swath of Minnesota including the Twin Cities in the purple, which is “Very Unhealthy” air according to the MNPCA. Because of the fine particles in the air, they’re recommending that sensitive individuals should avoid any outdoor activity, while anyone else should avoid being out for any prolonged period of time.
The MNPCA sent out this warning Friday afternoon:
Smoke from Canadian wildfires lingers over most of Minnesota. There will be some slight improvement in air quality throughout Friday and Friday night. However, on Saturday northerly winds behind a cold front will bring more smoke from wildfires located north of the Canadian border in Ontario and Manitoba into Minnesota.
This reinforcing batch of heavy smoke is expected to arrive starting Saturday morning. Smoke will continue pouring into the state throughout Saturday and into Sunday. High pressure will build over the area for Sunday and remain over the area for Monday into Tuesday morning. Smoke will recirculate under the high pressure, leading to prolonged period of heavy smoke. Fine particle levels will begin to improve Tuesday as southerly winds start moving the smoke out of the state.
Air Quality Alert through Tuesday across MinnesotaImage courtesy of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Minnesota does see a few days each summer with unhealthy air, but this stretch has been truly unprecedented.
The Minnesota DNR continues to keep an eye on those Canadian wildfires. William Glesener is the wildfire operations supervisor for the DNR.
"Forest Service and some of the folks out of the Ely Tanker Base are going up and doing the monitoring of those Canadian fires, and keeping track of where they are and what the current activity is on them."
Anyone with asthma, heart conditions, or other lung and breathing issues should absolutely take precautions about being outside over the next five days.
According to the MNPCA:
Sensitive groups whose health is affected by unhealthy air quality: There are people who are more likely to be affected when fine particle pollution reaches an unhealthy level.
People who have asthma or other breathing conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
People who have heart disease or high blood pressure.
Children and older adults.
People of all ages who are doing extended or heavy, physical activity like playing sports or working outdoors.
People who don’t have air conditioning to reduce indoor air pollution.
The CBC in Canada is reporting the fire hazard across the western part of the country could cost billions of dollars in damage and potentially thousands of lives. In some cases fires are burning so intensely they are creating their own weather systems. Experts warn that plans need to be made to combat the fires and the effects of climate change, or these events could become commonplace in the next couple of decades.
Minnesota has also seen fire activity this year thanks to extremely dry conditions, with wildfires burning in and around Ely and the Boundary Waters.
