Wildfire smoke choked Minnesota from Sunday to Tuesday, as 208 fires raged across the Canadian prairie. Minneapolis had the worst air quality of any city in the nation Tuesday, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Parts of the Twin Cities registered 240 on the air quality index, exceeding the level considered “very unhealthy” for everyone.
The Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have declared states of emergency as thousands of people have been forced to evacuate and two people were killed by the blazes. Nearly half of the fires are burning out of control and 15 new fires were reported Tuesday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
The largest fire, measuring roughly twice the size of Hennepin County, is in the province of Saskatchewan, said Ryan Lueck, an air quality forecaster with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
A cold front pushed the smoke southward early Tuesday morning, where it met heavy rainfall from a storm rolling through south-central Minnesota. Heavy concentrations of smoke persisted through the rain, tying the state’s poorest air quality reading on record set in June 2023.
The smoke was already starting to clear out of northwest Minnesota on Tuesday, and Lueck said forecasters anticipate ending the air quality alert by midday Wednesday.
Kristoffer Tigue and C.J. Sinner of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.