Midwestern states, often described as climate paradises, are suffering from a summer of smoke, drought and heat

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The Masks are back in Wisconsin this week.

As smoke from Canada's wildfires blanketed the state, health officials urged people to wear face coverings — previously worn en masse to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 — if they had to spend time outdoors. This time, they excluded smoke particles.

At Madison's Pinney library, staff handed out N95 masks. The building was busy Wednesday, especially the children's section, in part because poor air quality had prompted the school district to cancel summer school and community recreation programs for the day.

“After COVID, this seems like another big thing we've never experienced before,” library page Nancie Cotter said. “It's almost a little scary.”

The lingering presence of wildfire smoke has made for an unusual start to summer across the Midwest. It also comes amid a near-record drought that is crisping fields in the Corn Belt and the threat of hotter summers ahead.

Many have thought of the region as a climate haven, rich in water resources and protected from rising sea levels and powerful hurricanes.

This summer is blurring that image.

“When we think about both climate and air quality, we often think of it as something that happens to other people,” said Tracey Holloway, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “As the climate changes, it changes everything for everyone.”

The deluge of smoke takes people by surprise

Forecasters say a perfect storm of factors has caused the smoke to settle in the Midwest, including atmospheric conditions. How Canada manages its wildfires also plays a role.

And the changing climate is bringing warmer temperatures, droughts and more erratic winds that are causing wildfires to burn faster and harder than before. They also start earlier in the year.

The severity of the problem last month shocked the public, curtailing much-anticipated summer activities. In Minneapolis in mid-June, the city's air quality was among the worst in the world. When another wave of smoke engulfed the city at the end of the month, the beaches around Cedar Lake – usually crowded on summer afternoons – were deserted.

“In most people's lifetimes, this is the worst that's ever happened,” said Matt Taraldsen, who oversees a team of meteorologists and air quality researchers at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Smaller incursions of smoke from Canada in 2018 and 2021 gave forecasters clues about what was to come — but nothing compared to this summer. The only real analogue spans more than a century, Taraldsen said, when a series of wildfires in 1918 swept through northeastern Minnesota, roughly from Bemidji to Duluth.

Minnesota officials are offering advice to counterparts in several surrounding states, which haven't had the experience to warn the public in recent years about smoke, Taraldsen said. But even if Minnesota had a head start on improving its public communications, actual predictions pose a major technical challenge.

The US, Canadian, British and European weather models used by forecasters do not always show in detail how air moves between different levels of the atmosphere, making it difficult to guess whether choking smoke will be pushed to the ground or held harmlessly aloft.

Tobacco and its effects have surprised people. Madison artist Mark Hayward said he almost cut short a yo-yo performance at Milwaukee's iconic Summerfest music festival because he couldn't stop coughing.

“It's crazy,” Hayward said. “I have family in southern California, but I never thought I'd have to deal with this in the Midwest.”

Experts say the Midwest will not be a climate “haven.”

While it's not yet clear how much smoke the region will have to deal with in the coming summers, other indicators of climate change are emerging.

“Weather whiplash,” as Wisconsin State climatologist Steve Vavrus described the events of the past six months, is one.

The Mississippi River flooded to near-record levels this spring. Now, much of the Midwest is gripped by drought, putting farmers on edge during the growing season.

In Illinois and Iowa, which together produce more than a quarter of the nation's corn and soybeans, at least 90 percent of those crops are experiencing drought conditions. Dry conditions are expected to persist into September.

Climate models predict more extreme jumps like this between wet and dry periods, Vavrus said. Volatility is something audiences will have to get used to.

Future summer temperatures are a little less certain. Although summers in the Midwest don't heat up as quickly as other parts of the country, the region is likely to see more extremely hot days. This will be exacerbated in places like Milwaukee, which suffers from the urban heat island effect, which occurs when large cities get more heat than their surrounding areas.

Cities around the Great Lakes are often floated as climate destinations – places where people imagine they'll be safe from the worst effects of a changing climate. In some respects, this will remain true. Lakes won't dry up, wildfires don't burn here like they do in California, and hurricanes that hit the south usually show up as light rain.

But the region is not immune. Anna Haynes, who leads a Wisconsin Climate Change Impacts Initiative subcommittee that focuses on climate migration, said her group favors dropping the term “refuge” to describe the Midwest's climate.

“When you look up the definition, it's a sanctuary, a refuge … a safe place,” said Haines, also director of the Center for Land Use Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. “We don't think that's right.”

Bennet Goldstein of Wisconsin Watch contributed to this story.

This story is his product Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.