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State Fair
Estelle Timar-Wilcox

Riding roller coaster of weather and attendance, Minnesota State Fair heads into final weekend

A crowded street at a state fair
Fairgoers line Liggett Street at the Minnesota State Fair on Wednesday.
Ben Hovland | MPR News

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The Minnesota State Fair wraps up its 12-day run on Labor Day.

Heading into the fair’s final weekend, which traditionally sees the biggest crowds each year, the weather forecast calls for sunny, dry, mild conditions.

That’ll be a welcome change from earlier in the fair’s run, when severe weather hindered visitor numbers.

There was sweltering heat on Sunday and Monday, followed by severe storms late Monday and early Tuesday that delayed the fair’s opening by a couple hours on Tuesday. Another round of severe weather briefly shut down the fairgrounds on Thursday afternoon.

While the fair set daily attendance records its first two days, and again on Wednesday, the heat and storms also led to some of the fair’s lowest daily attendance figures on Monday and again this past Thursday.

Amid the ups and downs, some new vendors reported better-than-expected sales.

Leslie Chan runs the new Chan’s Eatery booth that’s selling Korean corndogs and mochi donuts. She said they had to bring in extra staff.

“More business is always good, but it’s also stressful for our employees,” she said. “A lot of people know about the Korean corndog, it's such a big trend on TikTok right now, just all social media, so I think that’s why we have such big turnout here.”

Sean Sherman — also known as the Sioux Chef — is helping run the new Indigenous Food Lab booth. It opened its fair run on Wednesday.

“Yesterday was our very first day vending, and yesterday was actually the very first time a Native American vendor has sold food at the state fair,” he said Thursday. “We were busy all day, and we did the best to try to project what we were gonna do, and we feel good about it. Looking forward to a really busy weekend, looking forward to a lot of people stopping by.”