Midwestern states, often touted as climate havens, suffer from summer smog, drought, heat

MADISON, Wis. – 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 the poor air quality had caused 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 during a near record drought crisp fields throughout the corn belt and the threat of hotter summers.

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 catches people by surprise

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

And the changing climate is bringing warmer temperatures, dry spells and more erratic winds that fuel wildfires which burn faster and stronger 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 of the worst in the world. When another wave of smoke washed over the city by the end of the month, the beaches around Cedar Lake – normally 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 of 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 it flooded to near-record levels this spring. Now, much of the Midwest is suffering from drought, putting farmers on the sidelines 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% of these plants face 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 they don't heat up as quickly Like 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 effectsomething that happens when big cities have more heat than the surrounding areas.

Cities around the Great Lakes often float as climate destinations – places where people imagine they will 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 Haines, who heads a subcommittee of it Wisconsin Climate Change Impacts Initiative focused on climate migration, she said her group favors dropping the term “sanctuary” 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 Deska publishing independent reporting network based in University of Missouri School of Journalism in cooperation with Report on America and Society of Environmental Journalistssponsored by the Walton Family Foundation.