No Smoking: Why are there far fewer air quality alerts compared to last year?

Our skies may be a bit hazy from time-to-time this summer due to smoke from fires hundreds of miles away. But this year is nothing like our summer last year. Why is that?

Last year, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says Minnesota had a record 21 Air Quality Alerts. 16 of them  were caused by the seemingly endless Canadian wildfires sending smoke our way.

Nine of those alert days even reached the red category, meaning the air was dangerous for everyone.

Not this year, thanks to some well-timed rain, says National Weather Service Meteorologist Caleb Grunzke.

"Where those fires were last year, it was really easy for the smoke to be transported down here into our region, just with basically a northwest flow pattern that we usually see in the summertime," says Grunzke. "But with that moisture that they received now, the number of wildfires is much less."

Grunkzke says the main concentration of wildfires in Canada this summer is to the Northwest of us and not within a weather pattern that  affects us.

"The main concentration of wildfires is actually now in more in Northeastern British Columbia and Northern Alberta and the northwest territories," explained Grunzke. "So the wildfires now are a lot farther away than where they were last year."

Even though there haven't been as smoky so far this summer, the MPCA does say that could change quickly as summer heats up more and things dry out to the north.