Minnesota Wildfire, Smoke, and Air Quality Map

Fire season and landscape

The main fire window runs March through May, after snowmelt and before green-up, when dead grass and leaf litter cure fast statewide. Drought summers can extend fire into the pine and spruce country of the Arrowhead, as the Greenwood Fire did in 2021. In most summers, smoke from Canadian fires affects more of the state than Minnesota's own fires do.

Public land is heaviest up north: the Superior National Forest wraps the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and the Chippewa National Forest sits over the lake country near Bemidji and Grand Rapids. South and west, the state shifts to farmland and prairie remnants where fast-moving grass fire is the main fire type. Spring flooding on the Red River and the upper Mississippi rounds out the hazard profile.

• When Canadian fires are active, smoke often reaches Minnesota from fires hundreds of miles away; the smoke and air quality forecast layers show it.
• Remote lightning starts in the Boundary Waters can smolder for days before making a run, and the 24-hour satellite hotspot layer usually flags them before any mapped perimeter exists.
• The Red River drains north and floods on snowmelt most springs; the river gauge layer tracks the crest as it moves down the valley.