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Updraft® - Minnesota Weather News
Ben Cathey
Updated:

Windy Saturday may kick up harvest dust, fire risk across Minnesota

Air quality alert posted for SW Minnesota on Saturday

Map of Minnesota with orange corner
The orange region on the map shows an air quality alert for Saturday in southwestern Minnesota. Blowing dust could become a health concern for sensitive groups including people with lung disease, older adults and children
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

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Saturday will bring low relative humidity, near-record high temperatures, lots of high winds and a heightened wildfire risk to parts of Minnesota. An air quality alert has been issued for wind-blown dust across southwestern and west-central Minnesota.

Warm, dry dusty Saturday

The combines have been go-go-go across Minnesota farm country this week with the dry weather. Check out these images of west-central Minnesota from the high-resolution Copernicus Sentinel satellite. Detroit Lakes sits at the bottom right corner.

The first image is from Aug 5, before the harvest and before the drying.

Northwest Minnesota before and after harvest
This Aug. 5 satellite image shows the area northwest of Detroit Lakes with lots of green crops yet to be harvested.
European Space Agency

The next image is from Oct. 5 with brown areas showing the mostly harvested landscape. These areas are prone to dust and could cause lowered visibility on Saturday.

Northwest Minnesota before and after harvest
This Oct. 5 satellite image shows a mostly harvested landscape across west-central Minnesota.
European Space Agency

Going into this week, the United States Department of Agriculture reported Minnesota’s soybean harvest at 25 percent compared to 51 percent of normal through the same date. Corn was much closer to an average pace, but those acres were a little behind, as well.

In southwestern Minnesota near Sioux Falls, S.D., new satellite data indicates the harvest is likely about half done. That could limit dust availability on Saturday.

Air quality alert posted for Saturday

The combination of warm, dry conditions and wind could create air quality problems Saturday across southwestern Minnesota. Gusts of 50 mph are expected on the region’s Buffalo Ridge.

High gusts seen in orange and green
Gusts (in dark orange) could top 50 mph briefly, on Buffalo Ridge in southwestern Minnesota.
National Centers for Environmental Prediction

With only one-half inch of rain or less since the end of September and wind gusts of 40 mph or more expected Saturday morning and afternoon, “the landscape is susceptible to blowing dust,” Minnesota Pollution Control Agency meteorologists Ryan Lueck told MPR News on Friday.

It “may result in poor enough air quality over a large enough area to meet our air quality alert threshold for sensitive groups,” he added. “Not a slam dunk, but still a situation we'd like to be proactive about.”

Later in the day, the MPCA posted an air quality alert for southwestern Minnesota and far western Minnesota, from east of Worthington to north of Ortonville.

The orange category alert warns the air may be unhealthy for sensitive groups including people with lung disease, older adults and children.

NASA dust model
NASA puts out this dust model. It largely predicts wildfire smoke or Saharan dust plumes. Forecasting of blowing dust is still really tricky because the inputs for data are not necessarily the easiest to find.
NASA