Spotty showers overnight; muggy weekend; Lane dumps on Hawaii

An inbound low-pressure system brings scattered rain to Minnesota through Friday. Some areas could pick up more than half an inch of much-needed rainfall.

NOAA's HRRR model shows the trend of increasing showers and T-Storms overnight into Friday.

Smoky pall again

Did you notice the white-tinted sky again today? It's another day of smoke over Minnesota from wildfires in Canada. The smoke plume from fires in western North America covers much of the continent again.

Smoky trend

If you've been thinking these smoky sky days in summer are increasing it's not your imagination.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency confirms that the number of air quality alert days from wildfire smoke has basically doubled since 2015.

You may have noticed: something’s in the air. Smoke from wildfires out west has infiltrated our skies this summer, making for hazy days, ruddy sunsets, and air quality alerts.

If it seems like the number of alerts due to wildfires has increased in the past few years, you’d be right. According to MPCA’s staff meteorologists we’ve had 26 air-quality alerts since 2015, and 14 of those were due to wildfire smoke. That’s nearly double the number of smoke-related alerts the MPCA called in the previous seven years.

It’s one thing to get smoke impacts from home-grown wildfires, but in recent years we’re getting hit with smoke from fires burning more than a thousand miles from here. This year we’ve already had six alerts, and more are likely to come.

“These are long-range transport events,” says MPCA meteorologist Daniel Dix. “We’re just seeing many more bigger, hotter fires that generate these kinds of air-quality impacts for Minnesota.” While the massive fires in California are the ones we hear about, Dix said the fires that are dimming the sun in Minnesota this year have been mainly in British Columbia. (However, we are now seeing smoke from wildfires due north of Minnesota in western Ontario.)

Summer rolls on

This weekend looks warm and humid. With dew points near 70 degrees, it's going to feel like summer. A fresher air mass returns next week.

Lane douses Hawaii

Areas around Hilo, Hawaii have already picked up around 15-inches of rain.

The biggest threat with Lane is flooding. Rainfall totals could reach 20 to 30-inches in some areas. Mudslides like this one are very likely. Washed out roads are a threat.

Quiet Atlantic hurricane season

Meanwhile, a developing El Nino and Saharan dust layers are keeping the Atlantic hurricane season in check.