Here's what you need to know about smoke this week in Minnesota
Smoky sky at the Weather Lab on Tuesday.
Paul Huttner/MPR News
The forecast has been mostly sunny this week, but the skies are looking pretty grey in some of the state. Why? Smoke! MPR News host Cathy Wurzer checked in with MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner to hear about that and other weather news for the week.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
CATHY WURZER: The forecast has been mostly sunny this week. But the skies are looking a little gray here around the state of Minnesota, in some places. What's going on out there? That's smoke. We're checking in with MPR's chief meteorologist Paul Huttner right now to hear about that and other weather news. Hey, Paul.
PAUL HUTTNER: Hey, Cathy. Good to talk to you as always. Happy Wednesday.
CATHY WURZER: And thank you. Happy Wednesday to you as well. So what we see this milky cast to the sky, that's smoke from what, Canadian wildfires.
PAUL HUTTNER: It is. They've been raging up in Alberta and the Canadian Rockies, numerous wildfires. There's been a huge plume of smoke up in Canada, and our winds finally shifted into the Northwest this week, and that's why it pushed it down over Minnesota. This thing is over 2,000 miles long. It runs from the Canadian Rockies, all the way down through Minnesota, the Great Lakes, East Coast, and out into the Atlantic Ocean, Cathy.
The thickest part of that smoke has been over us for the last day or so. And today the winds are southerly recycling it around Minnesota. It's a smudge. I'm looking at the satellite loop across Minnesota and you can see it in your right. That's why you get that milky white tint to the sky, and those crazy sunsets, like last night when it was a reddish orange.
But here's the thing, it's mostly aloft. So that's good news. The air quality is good across most of Minnesota. It's in the moderate range in the Western part of the state. Tomorrow though, there's a cold front coming in. It looks like the air quality will deteriorate. Some of that smoke is going to get pushed to the ground.
These cold fronts mean air with subsidence it's downward, it's pushing down. So that can bring some of that elevated smoke down where we breathe. And Minnesota Pollution Control Agency saying maybe they're going to issue another air quality alert tomorrow, Cathy. So we'll have to keep an eye out for that.
CATHY WURZER: Even with the chances for rain?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. Because it won't rain everywhere all the time, and that subsidence is a large scale event. So it's going to push that smoke down toward the ground. It does look like everything will clear out on Friday after that front blows through.
CATHY WURZER: Say, I'm wondering here about the wildfire smoke and the air quality alerts. How much of that is linked to climate change?
PAUL HUTTNER: There are increasing evidence and studies that show that it is, a couple of them. One, wildfires in the West have tripled, large wildfires over 1,000 acres since 1970. Part of that is climate change. And interesting, I just saw a study come out in the Journal of Environmental Research Letters, this extreme event attribution.
They say that 38% of the area burned in the Western US and Canada in the last 40 years can directly be attributed to CO2 emissions, not only through rising temperatures, but also through what they call aridification, which is the dryness. And it actually changes the vapor pressure, Cathy. So it sucks moisture out of the forests in the West quicker when you change the climate like this, and the trees are very sensitive to that.
So it's interesting to note that here in Minnesota, our air quality alerts have doubled in about the past decade, they've about doubled. So we're seeing more of these smoke events. It's common sense, right. More fires in the West were downwind, more smoke in Minnesota, and increasingly the science to support that.
By the way, that's what we're going to talk about on Climate Cast tomorrow. How is all that linked and what's the depth of the links to climate change. And we'll have that tomorrow on All Things Considered.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, interesting. So I mentioned the precipe chances for tomorrow. How was that looking in terms of the amount that we could see.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, pretty light for most of Minnesota. I think we'll see some scattered showers and thunderstorms developing in Northwest Minnesota tonight. That front will sweep across Minnesota Thursday. They'll be scattered rains. Most of the models saying a quarter of an inch or less for the Twin Cities Southern Minnesota, but maybe a half an inch to an inch in parts of Northern Minnesota with this system.
And then it zips through. We are colder and breezy as we head into Friday. High only low 60s, I think, in the Twin Cities. But it's a speed bump. We're back into beautiful weather this upcoming weekend, Cathy. It looks sunny and we'll see highs back into the 70s.
CATHY WURZER: It'll be nice to have a nice weekend, for once. The past few have been a little much.
PAUL HUTTNER: Get the timing right.
CATHY WURZER: Yeah, the timing has been great. How about the crop report? I lost track of this. How is the planting season going? And this surprised me because we had this cold start to spring in April around 1.3 degrees colder than average. But May is running almost 5 degrees warmer than average so far. Fields are drying out.
Farmers are catching up. 61% of corn is planted in Minnesota. Last year at this time it was only 31%, and the five-year average is 58%. So we're a little ahead of schedule. Soybeans a little slower, around 30% planted, but only 13% last year. And we're still ahead of the five-year average.
So the warm weather has been drying the soils in many areas of the state. Southwest Minnesota has had a lot of rain, South and West of the Minnesota River. 4 to 8 inches in the past several days. So that's the one area that's still super wet. But topsoil moisture, 66% adequate, 27% surplus and the forecast, as I said, not a ton of rain this week. So pretty good news, actually for farmers, as we're beginning to warm up and dry out.
CATHY WURZER: There were some anglers grumbling last weekend with the fishing opener that it was like ice fishing in some of the far northern Minnesota lakes. So as we speak, are all the lakes free of ice?
PAUL HUTTNER: I think most of them are. The only one that I see is a lake that I love, Brule Lake, which is up on the end of the Caribou Trail, that's West of Grand Marais, showed on NASA's MODIS satellite. It looked like it still had some ice as of yesterday. But Gunflint Lake up at the Canadian border went out May 12, that's about six days past the average. Poplar, on the Gunflint Trail, went out May 14. That's about eight days later than average.
So yeah, it was late this year by about a week in much of Minnesota. I think now though most of the ice is finally out in northern Minnesota, Cathy, and the forecast, oh boy, it looks like summer as we head into next week. Maybe some more 80s.
CATHY WURZER: Really? OK.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. In fact, the outlooks for NOAA are putting a big bull's eye of warm favoring warmer than average temperatures right across the northern US, and Minnesota is right in the middle of that.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, OK. I look forward to that. Thank you Mr Huttner.
PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure. Thanks, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Paul Huttner is MPR's chief meteorologist. You can hear him on Climate Cast as he mentioned tomorrow afternoon during All Things Considered. And to keep up with the latest weather news of course, we've got The Updraft blog. You can find that at mprnews.org.
PAUL HUTTNER: Hey, Cathy. Good to talk to you as always. Happy Wednesday.
CATHY WURZER: And thank you. Happy Wednesday to you as well. So what we see this milky cast to the sky, that's smoke from what, Canadian wildfires.
PAUL HUTTNER: It is. They've been raging up in Alberta and the Canadian Rockies, numerous wildfires. There's been a huge plume of smoke up in Canada, and our winds finally shifted into the Northwest this week, and that's why it pushed it down over Minnesota. This thing is over 2,000 miles long. It runs from the Canadian Rockies, all the way down through Minnesota, the Great Lakes, East Coast, and out into the Atlantic Ocean, Cathy.
The thickest part of that smoke has been over us for the last day or so. And today the winds are southerly recycling it around Minnesota. It's a smudge. I'm looking at the satellite loop across Minnesota and you can see it in your right. That's why you get that milky white tint to the sky, and those crazy sunsets, like last night when it was a reddish orange.
But here's the thing, it's mostly aloft. So that's good news. The air quality is good across most of Minnesota. It's in the moderate range in the Western part of the state. Tomorrow though, there's a cold front coming in. It looks like the air quality will deteriorate. Some of that smoke is going to get pushed to the ground.
These cold fronts mean air with subsidence it's downward, it's pushing down. So that can bring some of that elevated smoke down where we breathe. And Minnesota Pollution Control Agency saying maybe they're going to issue another air quality alert tomorrow, Cathy. So we'll have to keep an eye out for that.
CATHY WURZER: Even with the chances for rain?
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. Because it won't rain everywhere all the time, and that subsidence is a large scale event. So it's going to push that smoke down toward the ground. It does look like everything will clear out on Friday after that front blows through.
CATHY WURZER: Say, I'm wondering here about the wildfire smoke and the air quality alerts. How much of that is linked to climate change?
PAUL HUTTNER: There are increasing evidence and studies that show that it is, a couple of them. One, wildfires in the West have tripled, large wildfires over 1,000 acres since 1970. Part of that is climate change. And interesting, I just saw a study come out in the Journal of Environmental Research Letters, this extreme event attribution.
They say that 38% of the area burned in the Western US and Canada in the last 40 years can directly be attributed to CO2 emissions, not only through rising temperatures, but also through what they call aridification, which is the dryness. And it actually changes the vapor pressure, Cathy. So it sucks moisture out of the forests in the West quicker when you change the climate like this, and the trees are very sensitive to that.
So it's interesting to note that here in Minnesota, our air quality alerts have doubled in about the past decade, they've about doubled. So we're seeing more of these smoke events. It's common sense, right. More fires in the West were downwind, more smoke in Minnesota, and increasingly the science to support that.
By the way, that's what we're going to talk about on Climate Cast tomorrow. How is all that linked and what's the depth of the links to climate change. And we'll have that tomorrow on All Things Considered.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, interesting. So I mentioned the precipe chances for tomorrow. How was that looking in terms of the amount that we could see.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah, pretty light for most of Minnesota. I think we'll see some scattered showers and thunderstorms developing in Northwest Minnesota tonight. That front will sweep across Minnesota Thursday. They'll be scattered rains. Most of the models saying a quarter of an inch or less for the Twin Cities Southern Minnesota, but maybe a half an inch to an inch in parts of Northern Minnesota with this system.
And then it zips through. We are colder and breezy as we head into Friday. High only low 60s, I think, in the Twin Cities. But it's a speed bump. We're back into beautiful weather this upcoming weekend, Cathy. It looks sunny and we'll see highs back into the 70s.
CATHY WURZER: It'll be nice to have a nice weekend, for once. The past few have been a little much.
PAUL HUTTNER: Get the timing right.
CATHY WURZER: Yeah, the timing has been great. How about the crop report? I lost track of this. How is the planting season going? And this surprised me because we had this cold start to spring in April around 1.3 degrees colder than average. But May is running almost 5 degrees warmer than average so far. Fields are drying out.
Farmers are catching up. 61% of corn is planted in Minnesota. Last year at this time it was only 31%, and the five-year average is 58%. So we're a little ahead of schedule. Soybeans a little slower, around 30% planted, but only 13% last year. And we're still ahead of the five-year average.
So the warm weather has been drying the soils in many areas of the state. Southwest Minnesota has had a lot of rain, South and West of the Minnesota River. 4 to 8 inches in the past several days. So that's the one area that's still super wet. But topsoil moisture, 66% adequate, 27% surplus and the forecast, as I said, not a ton of rain this week. So pretty good news, actually for farmers, as we're beginning to warm up and dry out.
CATHY WURZER: There were some anglers grumbling last weekend with the fishing opener that it was like ice fishing in some of the far northern Minnesota lakes. So as we speak, are all the lakes free of ice?
PAUL HUTTNER: I think most of them are. The only one that I see is a lake that I love, Brule Lake, which is up on the end of the Caribou Trail, that's West of Grand Marais, showed on NASA's MODIS satellite. It looked like it still had some ice as of yesterday. But Gunflint Lake up at the Canadian border went out May 12, that's about six days past the average. Poplar, on the Gunflint Trail, went out May 14. That's about eight days later than average.
So yeah, it was late this year by about a week in much of Minnesota. I think now though most of the ice is finally out in northern Minnesota, Cathy, and the forecast, oh boy, it looks like summer as we head into next week. Maybe some more 80s.
CATHY WURZER: Really? OK.
PAUL HUTTNER: Yeah. In fact, the outlooks for NOAA are putting a big bull's eye of warm favoring warmer than average temperatures right across the northern US, and Minnesota is right in the middle of that.
CATHY WURZER: Oh, OK. I look forward to that. Thank you Mr Huttner.
PAUL HUTTNER: My pleasure. Thanks, Cathy.
CATHY WURZER: Paul Huttner is MPR's chief meteorologist. You can hear him on Climate Cast as he mentioned tomorrow afternoon during All Things Considered. And to keep up with the latest weather news of course, we've got The Updraft blog. You can find that at mprnews.org.
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