This summer has been hot, smoky and soggy, and Minnesotans are sick of it

The nasty storms that ripped through the Twin Cities this week relieved the latest heat snap, but debris wasn’t even picked up yet as another wave of Canadian wildfire smoke rolled in.

This round of rotten air is expected to last through at least Monday. It’s the fourth time this summer that Minnesota’s air quality reached unsafe levels for more than a day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This summer’s cocktail of heat, smoke and rain has canceled or curtailed everything from outdoor happy hours to group bike rides and kids’ tennis lessons. It’s left some Minnesotans struggling with feelings of a lost summer. What should be our glorious reprieve from the long winters indoors is very much up in smoke.

“I feel like I’ve tried to make the most of it, but something doesn’t feel right about it with the smoke when I go outside,” Brigid Mulloy said on a walk with her dog, Harry, in Loring Park on Thursday.

This summer doesn’t stand out as the hottest, the wettest or the smokiest in the Twin Cities.

But it has been above-average in all those regards, said Kenny Blumenfeld, senior climatologist in the Minnesota State Climate Office.

Slightly more than half the days since mid-May have been hot, smoky, rainy or some combination of all three in the Twin Cities, according to a Star Tribune analysis of air pollution and weather data.

“That’s really the first summer in the last decade where we’ve had those things all working in tandem,” Blumenfeld said. Other recent smoky summers haven’t been as hot or wet.

Normally, Minnesota summers are marked by heat waves that are broken up by the kind of day Blumenfeld said “feels like a ready-made picnic.”

This year’s heat has been accompanied by humidity, which means it doesn’t cool down as much at night. And when we’ve gotten breaks — like Thursday morning when temps felt like fall — they haven’t always been nice.

“You get warm, humid air, it leaves very reluctantly, and then it’s replaced by cool, crisp days with milky blue skies that smell like a tire fire,” Blumenfeld said.

All of it is putting a damper on summer activities.

“We’re learning to live with the smoke,” Rabe said

Walking on the newly reopened Stone Arch Bridge Thursday, Alena Ang of Minneapolis said she has noticed the smoke.

“We were up north and we went on a boat ride, and it was really hard to see the end of the water,” Ang said.

Endurance athletes in Minnesota long have had to cope with excessive heat, extreme cold, snowstorms and lightning. In recent years, smoky air has also scrubbed workouts and competitions.

Jeff Metzdorff, owner of the Mill City Running store in Minneapolis, said group runs and team workouts are canceled when the AQI hits 160 or above.

Now, “we’re dealing with this year after year, every summer,” Metzdorff said. “It’s the unfortunate reality of living in the Upper Midwest right now.”

InnerCity Tennis, which teaches youths and adults in Minneapolis, canceled practice Thursday for the third or fourth time this summer, said Grahamm Kellogg, community programs manager. The heat hasn’t been a huge issue, since practice usually wraps up by noon. Instead, it’s the smoke.

That’s tough for kids who were counting on spending an hour outdoors. “A lot of kids these days are already cooped up inside,” he said.

The last few smoky summers have been a learning curve for InnerCity staff. They’ve had to figure out how air quality affects athletics, then communicate that to parents and kids.

That’s new for Kellogg.

Data backs that up. While wildfire haze has been a part of Minnesota summers for a long time, the last 10 years have been different, Blumenfeld said.

“There’s just been a real uptick in the frequency of heavy surface smoke and reduced visibility,” he said. “We’ve entered a smokier regime.”