MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – A weekend air quality alert has been issued for much of Minnesota, with health officials warning that ozone pollution could pose risks for residents.

Air quality alert covers majority of MN

What we know:

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency issued an alert for western and southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities, Brainerd, Alexandria, Albert Lea, Marshall, Worthington, Rochester, Hinckley, St. Cloud, Winona, Ortonville, Mankato, East Grand Forks, Moorhead, and the Tribal Nations of Upper Sioux, Mille Lacs, Prairie Island, Leech Lake, and White Earth.

The alert runs from noon Saturday, June 6, through 11 p.m. Sunday, June 7. Ozone levels are expected to reach the orange AQI category, which is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups.

High ozone levels are expected during Saturday and Sunday afternoons, with conditions improving after sunset and again Sunday morning before rising in the afternoon.

Health officials recommend moving outdoor activities outside the afternoon hours to reduce exposure.

Why you should care:

Unhealthy ozone levels can aggravate lung diseases like asthma, emphysema, and COPD. Symptoms may include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, throat soreness, wheezing, coughing, or unusual fatigue.

People at higher risk include those with asthma or other breathing conditions, children, teenagers, people doing heavy outdoor activity, and some healthy individuals who are more sensitive to ozone.

Precautions and pollution reduction tips

What you can do:

Everyone should take precautions when air quality is unhealthy. Limit or postpone physical activity, avoid busy roads and wood fires, and keep relief inhalers handy if you have breathing conditions.

To help reduce ozone pollution, officials suggest reducing vehicle trips, filling up gas tanks at dawn or dusk, using public transportation or carpooling, postponing use of gas-powered lawn equipment, and avoiding backyard fires.

Ozone is produced on hot, sunny days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides react with sunlight. The current weather forecast of mostly sunny skies, warm temperatures, and low humidity is creating ideal conditions for higher ozone levels across the region.

TODAY

Warm and humid with more clouds than sun at times, and a chance for showers and thunderstorms building from late morning into the afternoon. Highs reach the mid 80s, with light wind becoming southwest around 5 mph. There should still be dry pockets mixed in, but any slow-moving storm could bring a quick flooding downpour and interrupt outdoor plans.  

TONIGHT

Storm chances ease back some after the evening, with only a lower-end chance for showers lingering later at night. Lows hold near 70, with a light southeast breeze. It does not look like a washout from start to finish, but the air stays warm and sticky overnight.  

TOMORROW

More clouds than sun with showers becoming more likely as the day goes on, especially later in the afternoon. Highs reach the mid 80s, with a south southeast breeze around 5 to 10 mph and a few gusts near 20 mph. This looks like one of the wetter and less reliable days for daytime plans, even though there should still be some dry stretches mixed in.  

TOMORROW NIGHT

Showers and thunderstorms continue through the night with warm, muggy air holding in place. Lows stay near 70, with a light south wind. Roads could stay wet at times overnight, and locally heavier rain is still possible.  

TUESDAY

Mostly cloudy, humid, and unsettled with more showers and thunderstorms possible. Highs recover into the mid 80s, with a southwest breeze around 10 mph. This is another day where outdoor schedules will be harder to trust, and any heavier storm could reduce visibility and create ponding on roads.  

TUESDAY NIGHT

Showers and thunderstorms continue through the evening, then ease back somewhat later at night. Lows settle in the low 70s, with a light southwest breeze. It stays humid and unsettled, although coverage should not be as widespread late at night as it may be earlier in the evening.  

WEDNESDAY

Very warm and very humid with a mix of clouds and some sun, plus another chance for showers and thunderstorms. Highs reach the upper 80s, pushing close to 90 in warmer spots. Compared with earlier in the week, heat and humidity become bigger factors even if rain is not constant all day.  

7 DAY FORECAST

The overall pattern stays much more humid and unsettled through the first half of the week, with repeated chances for showers and thunderstorms from Sunday through at least Wednesday, and very warm air staying in place the whole time. Highs generally stay in the 80s, with readings pushing close to 90 by Wednesday and Thursday, so any breaks between storms will still feel distinctly summerlike. The main concern is not nonstop rain, but repeated rounds of storms and locally heavy downpours interrupting otherwise hot and muggy weather.  

CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) – Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!

The Cleveland Browns have a young roster, built around two consecutive power draft classes in 2025 and 2026. The young team heads towards a 2027 off-season, which is hoped to push them over the top with the final piece: quarterback. The team is also headed towards the 2029 debut of a magnificent roofed stadium in Brook Park. If everything goes right, the Browns will have a highly competitive club by that date.

After the Browns traded Myles Garrett to the Los Angeles Rams on Monday, every veteran with a pulse and an expensive contract becomes part of the next question. Who is still here? Who wants to be here? Who is quietly wondering whether the moving truck should be backed into the driveway before training camp?

Denzel Ward answered his part of that Saturday down the road from me in Eastlake, at his inaugural celebrity softball game, which is about as pleasant a setting as possible for a sunny day of casual sports.

“I definitely still want to be here,” Ward said, according to ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi. “Myles is a good friend of mine, a great teammate, but things aren’t lost. It’s Ohio against the world. So people could doubt us, but we’re going out there still trying to play our best ball and bring wins to the city.”

“Ohio against the world”. That is more than a quote. That is a veteran planting his feet.

And, boy, do the Browns need a few of those right now. Or at least one. This one.

Ward is 29 years old, which in normal human society means you are still young enough to make bad decisions and recover by lunch. In NFL roster society, it means you are the guy younger players are watching when things get weird. And they often get weird in this town, with this franchise.

Ward is local. He is from Nordonia. He played at Ohio State. He understands what it means when a player says, “It’s Ohio against the world,” because that line is not just T-shirt copy around here. It is the regional operating system. It is what you say when everybody outside the state is laughing and pointing fingers, and everybody inside it is deciding whether to laugh, swear, or shovel the driveway again.

With Garrett gone, Ward becomes the Browns’ longest-tenured player. ESPN noted he was the No. 4 pick in the 2018 draft, which means he has lived through Hue Jackson, Freddie Kitchens, Kevin Stefanski’s 11-win debut, the pandemic season, playoff heartbreak, quarterback roulette, Deshaun Watson drama, the 2023 Flacco fever dream, the 2025 wreckage, and now the franchise trading away perhaps the best defensive player it has ever had.

Ward has also been excellent through most of it. Five Pro Bowls. A five-year, $100 million extension was signed in April 2022. Two years left on that deal, but — and this is why the trade chatter exists — no guaranteed salary remaining, per ESPN. Plus, ongoing concern about injuries, particularly concussions.

So, yes, people are going to ask whether he is next. That is not paranoia. That is simple pattern recognition.

The Browns, for their part, have pushed back. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler and others reported after the Garrett deal that the Browns are not making Ward available. Andrew Berry said Tuesday that Ward is “a big part of the team, and we like him a lot,” adding, “He’s still playing at a really high level. That doesn’t change with this transaction.”

Then Berry, wisely, said it was appropriate for Ward to speak for himself.

Ward did.

Let’s be clear about something: a player saying he wants to stay is not a blood oath, a constitutional amendment, or even a guarantee that somebody in an NFL front office won’t get a phone call and start doing math on a legal pad.

Football is football. Contracts are contracts. Cap charts are where romance goes to be placed on injured reserve.

But right now, Ward’s words matter because of the room around him.

This is a young roster, and it is suddenly younger in the emotional sense, too. Jared Verse is talented and may become a monster in Cleveland’s defense, but he has not lived this franchise. The rookie receivers, young defenders, developing linemen, and whichever quarterback survives the summer carnival are walking into a building that just watched its most famous player get shipped west.

Somebody has to tell them what Cleveland is.

Ward can do that.

Have a good one! GO BROWNS!

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THE WATERCOOLER

THE LIFT

Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…

We pause our regularly scheduled football angst for a different sort of elder-statesman tribute: Steve Jobs, fifteen years after his final WWDC appearance.

I’m an unabashed fan of Apple products (when I can afford them), in no small part due to Jobs’ vision for the company: polished software and hardware, developed in tandem, designed to simply fit into the hectic lives of their users.

AppleInsider’s William Gallagher looks back at June 6, 2011, when Jobs — visibly diminished by illness, but still very much Jobs — walked onstage and helped introduce iCloud. The line that sticks with me is the old one: “If the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software in them is their soul.”

That was Jobs. Even when his body was failing him, he was still talking about the soul of the thing.

We toss around “visionary” too much, usually for people who invented a new way to put ads in your face while you are trying to read about the Browns. Jobs earned the word. The iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iCloud did not just make Apple richer than Croesus with better packaging. They changed the way normal people interact with technology every hour of every day.

Years after his death, Jobs is still bending the shape of our daily lives — including mine, as I sit here typing this morning’s football gibberish on a machine descended from a philosophy he helped force into the world: make powerful things feel human.

That is a heck of a legacy. He and I are/were very different people, in many ways, but he remains an inspiration, even as he pondered his own mortality.

WRAPPING UP

When not wondering whether his laptop has a soul or just a lot of browser tabs begging for mercy, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.

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