Currently in the Twin Cities — August 20, 2024: Wildfire smoke filters away

The weather, currently.

High pressure continues to dominate Minnesota weather for the next couple of days. Look for another nice day Tuesday with a few more afternoon clouds. Canadian wildfire smoke will also continue to dissipate on Tuesday.

Temperatures will be a couple degrees cooler Tuesday, mostly in the upper 70s. The muggier air will remain pushed off to the west and south for most of the week.

By the weekend a large upper level ridge, or ‘heat dome’ will be building into the region pushing temperatures to 90 degrees by Sunday and Monday. The next chance of spotty thunder will be mainly Thursday night, otherwise the pattern is largely dry.

— Sven Sundgaard

What you can do, currently.

A Media Matters analysis found that last year — the hottest calendar year on record — network coverage of climate actually declined in the US. What’s worse, just 12% of reports about climate change mentioned fossil fuels as the driving cause. The media still reported on extreme weather, but stopped short of making the climate connection.

Independent climate journalism like Currently is needed more than ever. And this year, with all of these weather warnings already underway, we’ll unfortunately have plenty of opportunities to do better.