Return Of The Smoke: Minnesota’s Air Quality To Be Impacted This Week

While Minnesota has seen a wet start to summer, the state will be getting a little flashback to the last few summers with a blast of smoky air coming into the region this week.

Ushered in by a change in weather pattern, smoke from Canadian wildfires in northern Alberta and British Columbia will find its way into Minnesota, creating negative air quality impacts for a number of days this week.

Smoke started creeping into Minnesota through the day on Monday, with the northwestern parts of the state seeing the earliest impacts. Through the week, the northern two-thirds of the state is expected to see air quality impacts for several days.

The Minnesota Pollution Contol Agency shared in their outlook, which looks ahead two days, showing a majority of the state falling into "moderate" air quality impacts through at least Wednesday.

What can we expect?

There is some good news. The air quality levels are expected to generally only be lowered into the "moderate" category, and shouldn't sink into the unhealthy levels overall across the state.

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The MPCA says that air quality might reach toward the higher end of the moderate category, but isn't expected to get much worse than that this week.

What does that "moderate" air quality level mean?

When air quality levels reach "moderate" or yellow levels on an air quality map, that means air quality is acceptable, but there may be some risks for certain groups of people.

Particularly at risk are those unusually sensitive to air pollution.

How long will this smoke hang around?

As the MPCA explains, the smoke drifting in could linger into the middle of the week across much of the state, with persisting hazy conditions and moderate air quality levels due to high pressure settling in with a lack of strong wind to push the smoke out of the region.