Canadian wildfires trigger air quality alerts in Midwest U.S.

July will become the smokiest month in Manitoba on record, and the smoke is being felt in the United States. CTV’s Taylor Brock reports.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires has reached the U.S., triggering air quality alerts over much of the Midwest Thursday.

Ed Shimon, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the U.S., said wildfires have contributed to smoky conditions in eastern North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa.

“The computer models and the satellites show exactly where the smoke origination is, and it is in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, even far eastern Alberta has a few fires,” said Shimon.

The wildfire smoke has prompted the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to place all of Minnesota under an air quality alert which is expected to be in effect until Saturday evening.

“The smoke will be reinforced by an area of high pressure that will create light winds and limit dispersion of smoke,” said the MPCA in a news release.

Nick Witcraft, a research scientist and meteorologist with the MPCA, said this is only the second time a Code Red air quality (or worse) has been forecasted over the entire state.

Witcraft confirmed that most of the smoke in Minnesota is from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued an air quality alert for northern Illinois with conditions expected to improve on Friday.

“We have smoke shrouding the city here,” said Tom Skilling, chief meteorologist emeritus at WGN-TV, speaking from Chicago, Ill.

“I live in a high-rise building on the north side of Chicago, right on the Lake Michigan shoreline, and normally I can see the city skyline, which is only about six miles south of me, very clear. I can’t see more than two miles today,” he said.

Skilling said a westerly flow of smoke that’s coming from Utah is also contributing to the “very smoky, low visibility regime” in the Midwest.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources is warning residents of smoke from Canadian wildfires that is expected to remain over most of the state in the coming days.