The smoky season in Minnesota has just begun

It’s likely just the start.

Though the Minnesota skies were free of that smoky, hazy air from wildfire smoke well into July, that changed this week with the outbreak of wildfires in Superior National Forest in the northern border.

Although Canadian wildfires remain the primary source of the smoky air that has wafted across the state in recent summers, the recent hot weather triggered the conditions that caused active wildfires in northern Minnesota – more than a dozen as of Thursday, including three inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), according to the Minnesota Incident Command System (MICS).

The MICS said the fires started after a storm spread through the area with lightning on July 6.

On Tuesday, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) issued an air quality alert that runs through 11 a.m. Friday for much of the state, including the metro area, central counties and the Arrowhead region. Heavy smoke, when combined with air pollution, will exacerbate health impacts, the MPCA said in a news release.

Related: Here’s how wildfires and smoke compare to others in Minnesota historically

In late June, MPCA meteorologist Matt Taraldsen said the MPCA had been watching some fires in Canada and that the El Niño pattern was predicting longer-term drought.

Brennan Dettmann, a meteorologist at the NWS office in Chanhassen, agreed, saying weather patterns suggested a stretch of warm, humid summer-like pattern that would last at least through the first half of July.

Speaking before this recent hot stretch, he said Minnesota had been “pretty spoiled” to start the summer, with slightly below normal temperatures and lower humidity.

Then the fires began this week.

Canadian air sweeping in

There are hundreds of active fires in Canada, and forecasters predicted there would be 12 to 16 days of smoke in Minnesota from Canadian fires around the last week of July and the first week in August.

Taraldsen said the MPCA uploads data to the National Weather Service (NWS) hourly. Forecasts are made at least daily and weather service meteorologists have regular calls with forecasters in the Upper Midwest, the U.S. Forest Service and the forest service in Ontario, Canada. 

A host of state, federal and Canadian websites offer daily updates on weather forecasts, fire and smoke conditions. 

In the last five years, according to the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota has issued more air quality alerts because of wildfires than ever before because of hotter and drier conditions. 

Canadian wildfires have become a primary source of that smoke. The Climate Journal of the Minnesota State Climatology Office called last summer the “Great American Smokeout of 2025.”

Said the journal: “Most of the problems arrived on northerly and northwesterly winds, which swept in smoke-filled air from large fires that burned through the summer in the forests of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”

Related: Did the second and third most deadly wildfires on record in the U.S. occur in Minnesota?

The shift to smoke from Canada began during the summers of 2021 and 2023. 

The National Institutes of Health called 2023 the “turning point,” saying 46 million acres burned that year. Some smoke reached Europe and 98% of Canada’s population was exposed to at least one day of unhealthy smoke, the agency said.

Information about Canadian wildfires can be found at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), including smoke forecasts.

California wildfires, meanwhile, were a main source of poor air quality in Minnesota in 2020.

Elsewhere in the U.S., The Associated Press reported Detroit’s air quality was among the worst in the world for major cities, and in New York City health officials urged people to limit strenuous and prolonged outdoor activities and distributed tens of thousands of face masks designed to filter out 95% of tiny airborne particles.

A report from Flin Flon

In Flin Flon, a Canadian mining town that straddles the border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, local reporter Ron Dobson recently told MinnPost that the smoke situation was much better compared with last year.

“We’ve got rain and it’s more like a normal summer other than forest fires,” Dobson said. “There are some fires more (to the) north, but if it gets really dry, then it could change. For now, it’s really good.”

Last summer, the city was nearly wiped out by fire, and many residents were forced to evacuate, he said. Firefighters were able to divert the flames; however, many properties were destroyed about 20 miles away in the small town of Denari Beach and residents are still trying to rebuild, he said.

Wind and dry weather caused smaller fires to combine, and limited roads in remote areas can hamper both evacuations and firefighting efforts. 

“They have one little road that goes for 100 kilometers. If that road gets cut off they’re in trouble,” Dobson said. This summer, fires further north forced the evacuation of Lynn Lake, known as the “sport fishing capital of Manitoba.”

Despite reports of federal budget cuts to the National Weather Service, Dettmann said the Chanhassen office is within the staffing range of 10 to 20 meteorologists. Weather balloon launches continue twice per day at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.

The balloons ascend as high as 20 miles, carrying equipment that records and transmits data about humidity, temperature, air pressure, wind speed and direction, and GPS location. When the balloons burst in the thin atmosphere, a parachute carries the equipment back to earth. 

Sometimes the equipment is returned, but often not, Dettmann said. 

“They get pretty beat up,” he said. 

For more information:

• Smoke conditions can be found on the Airnow website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Daily updates of MPCA’s air quality forecast can be found here.
• An online factsheet provides tips to help “stay safe when it’s smoky.”
• The Minnesota Incident Command System and the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, share information among various weather forecasting and wildfire response organizations in the U.S. and Canada.
• The NIFC provides daily fire updates on the National Fire News webpage.
• California’s Wildfire Forecast & Threat Intelligence Integration Center provides a four-month outlook, which currently shows significant potential for wildfires in the northern part of the state.

Forrest Peterson is a Greater Minnesota-based freelance writer.

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