Air quality alert, scattered thunderstorms Monday, Tuesday; cooler midweek

Minnesota seeing early run of 90-degree days

Monday will again be hot, humid and hazy with smoky skies. An air quality alert is posted for some areas through midnight. Look for scattered thunderstorms on Monday and Tuesday with cooler and drier air moving in for mid to late week.

An air quality alert has been extended for east-central, south-central, and southeast Minnesota into western Wisconsin through midnight Monday.

The culprit is both surface ozone, which is a reaction between sunlight and heat with pollutants and wildfire smoke. This time the smoke is coming from fires in eastern Canada versus western Canada in our previous episodes of smoky skies.

Check the latest air quality conditions and forecasts here:

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Monday will be one last hot, muggy day with highs well into the 80s, close to 90 for some.

A slowly moving blast of cooler and drier air will be creating a large area of instability with scattered showers and some thunderstorms possible Monday into Tuesday, especially in the afternoon periods.

Tuesday will remain very warm and somewhat muggy with another chance of afternoon scattered thunderstorms.

Cooler and drier air will finally settle in for mid to late week. Dew points will be dropping from the muggy 60s to the much drier 40s.

High temperatures Wednesday will be in the 70s for most to low 80s.

The next chance of rain and thunder will move in late Friday into Saturday.

If you’ve been thinking it seems to be pretty consistently hot, very early, you’re right.

Sunday marked our fifth day in the 90s in the Twin Cities and Monday may make it six. It's the third highest number of 90-degree days by June 5 since we’ve kept records. Only 1934 and 2018 beat this year.

While one year or one heat wave can't be blamed entirely on climate change, we’ve been seeing a noticeable trend of heat starting earlier in the summer and lingering later into September in recent decades.

We used to average about one day in the 90s by June 5, but that modern average is more like three. Summers are getting longer while winters are getting shorter, a sure signal of a warming climate.