Canadian wildfire smoke causes ‘very unhealthy’ conditions in Midwest, even reaches Europe

Smoke from Canadian wildfires carried another day of poor air quality south of the border to the Midwest, where conditions in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan were rated “very unhealthy” Tuesday.

The fires have forced more than 27,000 Canadians in three provinces to flee their homes, and the smoke has even reached Europe.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow map showed a swath of red for “unhealthy” conditions across the eastern half Minnesota into western Wisconsin and northern Iowa. The map also showed purple for “very unhealthy” across much of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, where the Air Quality Index numbers of 250 and were common, though conditions started to improve slightly by late morning.

Canada is having another bad wildfire season, and more than 27,000 people in three provinces have been forced to evacuate. Most of the smoke reaching the American Midwest has been coming from fires northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg in Manitoba.

Canada’s wildfires are so large and intense that the smoke is even reaching Europe, where it is causing hazy skies but isn’t expected to affect surface-air quality, according the European climate service Copernicus.

The first high-altitude plume reached Greece and the eastern Mediterranean just over two weeks ago, with a much larger plume crossing the Atlantic within the past week and more expected in coming days, according to Copernicus.