More unhealthy air in southern, central Minnesota as wildfire smoke continues

INTERVIEWER: Well, I'm looking out my window in Saint Paul-- and, yep, still cloudy and hazy. You can see the smoke in the air that's blown in from Canadian wildfires. This is a pattern we've seen a lot this month.

NPR Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard has been tracking all things related to air quality and weather. And he joins me now. Hi, Sven.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Hi, yeah, it's yet another kind of gross day out there. Air quality alert through tonight. And we've seen a record number of alerts this year, up to 23. This is our 23rd air quality alert. 21 was the old record set back in summer of 2021, which we all thought was bad enough.

The average-- this is what sticks out even more to me-- the average number of air quality alerts in a year should be about 2 or 3. And we're seeing 10 times that many this year, but also two years ago.

INTERVIEWER: We've been getting a number of questions from listeners about air quality. And Kaylee from Chaska wrote in to say, quote, "this is the second summer that we've seen this type of impact from wildfires. We've seen more than that. Should we expect this to be a new normal?"

SVEN SUNDGAARD: That's a pretty common question. And the answer is complicated. The thing we know, you can't tie a specific fire to climate change. But we do know that climate change is making fire seasons more severe, longer, and more frequent.

But we also know that a place like Minnesota is overall getting wetter with time. But it's a really great example of how climate change makes extremes more extreme. And we know that this is an extreme place, right?

We get droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, snowstorms, all of the above. 2019, 2016 were record wet years for us, but now we've seen a few years in a row of droughts. It's a similar thing for Canada, where a lot of this smoke is coming from.

They do get droughts. They do get extreme cold and wet periods. And we're just seeing those extremes more extreme. So is it the new normal? That's hard to say, but we're probably going to see more frequent periods like this, but in between, floods and really wet periods-- just more of these extremes that are going to be happening.

So I wouldn't count on it every year. The pattern could switch again for the next few years. But this is probably something we're going to see more of. We haven't seen anything quite like this this frequently before.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, just briefly, can you tell me anything about these wildfires that are causing this in Canada?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yes. This started with wildfires that blew up this spring in Western Canada, and then that same heat dome moved over, gave us the heat that we saw in May, and continued to see on and off through June, but also created heat and dry conditions that started fires in Eastern Canada. And those ones are really still going pretty strongly.

That's where the smoke has been coming from these last few weeks. People remember a few weeks ago New York really getting some bad air quality-- records there. Records now in Chicago, Milwaukee, and then we had a record a couple of weeks ago. So these are coming from the east. And as long as those are going, we can expect smoke probably on and off until those are out.

INTERVIEWER: Kim from Maple Grove wanted to know if rain helps air quality.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, that's a complicated answer too, because if the smoke is aloft-- people might remember a few weeks ago, that pushed the smoke down to the surface and actually worsened the air quality. But if we get a of heavy rain, it can wash it out, because this is fine particulate that's in the air. And a good rain can wash it out to the ground.

INTERVIEWER: Are we going to get a good rain anytime soon?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Some of us will. In fact, we're talking about the potential for some severe weather today. We have numerous showers and thunderstorms still across Northeastern Minnesota. We've been seeing some sun here in Southern Minnesota. But Brainerd, Aitkin, Duluth, all the way up to the international border seeing on and off rain, which is good.

Duluth, of course, has been in the severe drought category as of last week. They've got a lot of rain last week, and they're getting more today. So that's some good news. But we're going to watch for potential for severe storms to kind of develop right on top of the Twin Cities, Southeastern Minnesota late this afternoon, early evening, and then push into Wisconsin.

East Metro into Western Wisconsin is on the edge of this slight risk-- level 2 out of 5 of severe weather. So I think most of the metro will avoid it because they'll be developing on top of us. But the potential is there for mainly some large hail and high wind gusts this afternoon. But west of us, probably very little in the way of rainfall today.

INTERVIEWER: Well, you mentioned severe risk. I feel like we haven't had as much severe weather so far this summer. Is that right?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: And you are correct. Even with Saturday's storm reports, which account for 39% of all of our warnings this season so far-- that's how pathetically sad it's been and quiet-- we're the least active season to date since 1995, 28 years ago. And that comes after last year was a record start to the severe weather season. So pretty incredible.

INTERVIEWER: Before I let you go, what is the forecast for the rest of the week?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, we're looking at probably an isolated chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, mainly for the northern half of the state. And then we're in for a dry period. So if you got rain this go around, you're lucky because we're in for several days of dry weather.

And things heating back up. We're going to be close to 90 for much of Southern and Western Minnesota by Sunday, into the 90s Monday. 4th of July looks hot, maybe close to 90. That's also the next chance of maybe some spotty thunder-- so maybe some natural fireworks late on Tuesday.

INTERVIEWER: OK. Well, meteorologist Sven Sundgaard-- hey, thank you.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: You're welcome.