By Erik Noonan
The smoke has returned to the land of sky blue waters.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued an air quality alert covering most of the state through Friday morning, with heavy smoke from fires in the Boundary Waters, the Arrowhead, and southern Canada pushing south behind a frontal boundary. Minnesota is about to have some of the worst air quality of anywhere on Earth. In parts of northeastern Minnesota, the Air Quality Index is forecast to reach maroon — hazardous for everyone. The metro is expected to reach red. The Boundary Waters is closed. Evacuations are underway near Ely. And all of it is happening inside an extreme heat warning, with heat indices near 100 degrees.
This is the climate we now live in. Smoke summers have arrived in Minnesota roughly on schedule for a few years now, and for a kid growing up in Duluth or Mankato today, a July week when you can’t play outside is as much a part of summer as mosquitoes. The climate catastrophe stopped being a forecast for these kids a while ago and became a childhood.
Who is most at risk
Wildfire smoke hits some Minnesotans much harder than others. Fine particles from smoke — PM2.5 — are small enough to pass deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. The health risks land hardest on children, whose lungs are still developing; on older adults; on pregnant people; and on anyone with asthma, COPD, or heart disease. The MPCA warns that at purple and maroon levels, the smoke can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks, and strokes in otherwise healthy people.
The burden also lands hardest on people who don’t get to opt out of being outside. Outdoor workers. Delivery riders. People experiencing homelessness. And people for whom walking, biking, or riding transit is simply how they get to work, to childcare, to the pharmacy. “Just stay inside” is sound medical advice and an impossible instruction for a lot of Minnesotans at the same time.
Layer on top of that the communities already breathing the state’s dirtiest baseline air — neighborhoods split by highways and ringed by industry, disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and low-income. Smoke compounds that inequity, even if it didn’t create it.
Staying active without hurting yourself
A week without moving is hard on bodies and minds, and you don’t have to abandon activity — but you do have to adapt it.
Check the air before you go. The MPCA’s air quality forecast and AirNow.gov show current AQI by location, and PurpleAir’s sensor network gives block-level readings. Conditions during a smoke event can swing dramatically within a single day. A morning that’s orange can be red by afternoon, or the reverse.
Match your effort to the number. The dose of smoke you inhale depends on how hard you’re breathing. At orange (unhealthy for sensitive groups), sensitive folks should ease up; at red, everyone should shorten and slow outdoor activity; at purple and maroon, move your workout indoors. A gentle spin is a different exposure than an interval session.
Take your training inside. Trainers, gym sessions, mall walking, community center tracks, YMCA day passes. It’s not glamorous but neither is bronchitis.
Filter your indoor air. Run an air purifier if you have one. If you don’t, a box fan and a MERV-13 furnace filter make a serviceable DIY purifier for about $40. Keep windows closed and run AC on recirculate.
BikeMN’s Tips for getting around under your own power
For many of us, the bike trip, dog walk, or trip to the bus still has to happen. Here’s how to make it safer:
Wear an N95 or KN95. A properly fitted respirator meaningfully cuts your PM2.5 exposure. A bandana or surgical mask does not. A respirator is uncomfortable in the heat, so carry water and slow down.
Ride easy, ride short. Lower intensity means lower ventilation means less smoke in your lungs. Combine errands into one trip. Skip the scenic detour this week if you can. Split trips up with a stop at the library or a friend’s house to keep your breathing rate level and your body cool.
Time your trips. Smoke concentrations often shift with wind and frontal passages. Check the forecast and move your commute earlier or later if a cleaner window exists.
Route away from traffic. Vehicle exhaust stacks on top of wildfire smoke. Greenways, side streets, and off-street trails carry less of that added load than arterials.
Let the e-assist motor help. If you own one or have one you can borrow, e-bikes are a great solution. The electric assist keeps your breathing rate down while still getting you where you’re going. Transit works the same way — a filtered, air-conditioned bus or train leg in the middle of a walk or ride cuts your total exposure.
Mind the heat too. This event is smoke plus 95 degrees. Hydrate, shade up, and if you feel dizzy, tight-chested, or unusually wiped out, stop riding.
Masks aren’t a long term solution
Every strategy above is adaptation, and adaptation alone won’t get us out of this.
These smoke events are driven by more frequent seasons of hotter and drier weather across our boreal forest — a direct product of the greenhouse gases humans keep emitting. In Minnesota, transportation is the single largest source of those emissions, and personal automobiles are the biggest slice. The same system that fills our summers with smoke asks us to sit in traffic contributing to it.
Resilience means more than air purifiers. It means healthy and diverse tree canopies robust enough to cool our streets and clean our air, planted for the climate we’re getting rather than the one we lost. It means an energy grid that doesn’t buckle when everyone’s AC and air filters run at once. And above all it means a transportation ecosystem that stops treating the automobile as the default — one where walking, biking, rolling, and transit are the easy choices, because they’re the choices that don’t feed the fire.
Every protected bike lane, every frequent bus route, every kid who can safely bike to school instead of being driven is climate infrastructure. The smoke may clear by the weekend. The rest of this is going to take longer.
Check the AQI. Mask up if you must ride. Take care of your neighbors who don’t have the option to stay in. And keep pushing for the Minnesota where a July childhood means lakes and long evenings, not air quality alerts and orange skies.
For current conditions, see the MPCA air quality forecast at pca.state.mn.us and AirNow.gov. The Minnesota Department of Health’s wildfire smoke page has additional guidance for protecting your health.
Minnesota is a national leader in forward-thinking transportation policy — and that didn’t happen by chance. For over 17 years, BikeMN has been at the table, fight after fight, shaping a future where biking, walking, and rolling is safe, accessible, and valued. That work is funded by members like you. Join as a sustaining supporter today at bikemn.org/join — $5 or $10 a month helps ensure Minnesota stays ahead. We all move forward together