Smoke from wildfires raging across Canada continued to choke parts of the Upper Midwest on Tuesday, polluting the air for millions of residents and casting a hazy glow in the skies across several northern states.
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and parts of Nebraska and Michigan were under air quality alerts on Tuesday, with advisories for more vulnerable groups to stay indoors or limit long stretches of outdoor activity and monitor their health, according to the National Weather Service.
While smoke was blanketing the air in the upper Midwest, it also drifted into others areas, mainly in higher layers of the atmosphere, and covered at least a third of the United States.
Marc Chenard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, said satellite imagery showed smoke stretched from the Dakotas, across the Midwest, into the Ohio Valley and as far north as New York and as far south as north Florida on the East Coast.
“A lot of the smoke is aloft in the atmosphere, so you’re not seeing visibility or air quality issues at the surface,” he said.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources issued an air quality alert on Tuesday for all of Iowa through 6 a.m. on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service, with levels considered unhealthy for sensitive groups and possibly even for healthy individuals expected over the next few days. Residents were advised to limit outdoor activity until the air quality improved.
The air quality alert for much of Minnesota remained in effect through noon on Wednesday, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The alert for some areas was expected to reach the red category, which signals it can be dangerous for everyone, the agency said.
The air quality index in the Twin Cities reached very unhealthy levels on early Tuesday morning before improving by late morning to unhealthy, according to a New York Times air quality tracker.
The index’s scale runs from 0 to 500; the higher the number, the worse the air. Both St. Paul and Minneapolis had registered 226 by 10 a.m. on Tuesday. Above 200, the air is considered “very unhealthy,” and all kinds of people would be at risk. By noon, the air quality was indexed at 182, an improvement. But above 150, the air is considered “unhealthy,” and the ill effects might start to be felt by people who are not in sensitive groups.
In Richfield, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, outdoor recreational programs scheduled for Tuesday were canceled because of weather and air quality concerns, the city’s government said in a statement shared on Facebook.
Images on social media showed hazy skies above St. Paul early Tuesday, with some people reporting damp, campfire-like smells mixing with the rain in the area.
Patrick Nathan, a store manager at Subtext Books, an independent bookstore in St. Paul, said Tuesday’s combination of bad air quality and rain was a new and puzzling experience. With the rain, he did not smell any smoke or notice hazy skies, he said.
Canada’s wildfire season got off to a grim start last month when two people were killed in the province of Manitoba as a wildfire raged, forcing the evacuation of an entire town.
Last week in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, neighboring provinces in Canada’s prairies, dozens of wildfires spread out-of-control, displacing thousands of residents. A cold front was dragging smoke from the large wildfires across the border into the States.
On Mackinac Island in Michigan, which was under an air quality advisory on Tuesday, Glen Young, a guide at Great Turtle Kayak Tours, said the skies have been hazy the last few days, especially at sunrise and sunset. He has not been able to smell or taste the smoke, though forecasts warn the effects may worsen throughout the day, he said.
Dense smoke brought in by a cold front was affecting the northwest region of Wisconsin Tuesday morning, according to the National Weather Service, with impacts expected statewide through the day Tuesday into Wednesday morning. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued an air quality advisory for the state until noon Wednesday, warning that periods of very unhealthy air quality are possible, according to the Weather Service.
The smoke is expected to push into New England later today, likely reaching Vermont by this afternoon and Boston near sunset.
On Wednesday, the smoke is expected to be widely spread again, but the concentrations may be slightly lower than they were on Tuesday.
“There’s some chance some of the denser surface smoke could drop into portions of Iowa, Kansas and maybe Missouri,” Mr. Chenard with the weather service said. “Some of the low air-quality that we’re seeing further north today could drop into those areas tomorrow.”
The wildfire smoke had filtered into the United States as a dust plume from the Sahara is heading toward the Gulf Coast region. There’s a chance the dust and smoke particles could meet in Florida, but the more likely scenario is that the smoke will be leaving as the dust arrives, Mr. Chenard said.
“They’re both being moved by the same wind,” he said. “As the dust moves into Florida tomorrow, the smoke actually gets pushed north out of Florida.”
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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