About two thirds of Wisconsin is under an air quality advisory due to smoke from Canadian wildfires, according to the state’s Department of Natural Resources. 

A map from the DNR shows much of central Wisconsin has air quality considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” including people with heart or lung disease, older adults and children. 

Eau Claire and Marathon counties have air quality considered unhealthy for everyone, according to the map. 

The advisory is expected to expire at midnight. 

This is the first air quality advisory of the season, and it comes about a week earlier than last year. In 2023, Canadian wildfire smoke spurred the most air quality advisories Wisconsin had seen in more than a decade. 

DNR Air Management Program Outreach Coordinator Craig Czarnecki told WPR that before last year, it had been about a decade since the state issued an advisory regarding wildfire smoke during the spring. 

“It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen impacts like this in the spring. That’s two springs here in a row,” Czarnecki said. 

It remains too early to tell if we will again see intense episodes of orange skies and the persistent smell of smoke that blanketed much of the state last summer. The haze got so thick last June the state issued its first “very unhealthy” advisory.

“One thing we do know right now is much of Canada does remain in those drought conditions, including some areas of extreme drought which is where some of those fires are located up in British Columbia right now,” he said. 

Canada had 145 active fires burning on Monday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

“What happened is presumably the wildfires that were going on in Canada might not have been fully put out by their snowpack, and so they can reinvigorate in the springtime,” said Marcia Cronce, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Milwaukee. 

“If you are able to view the sun, you’ll notice that it’s kind of a milky appearance in the sky in a little bit of filtered sunshine. It might appear a little bit more orange,” she said. 

The DNR issues air advisories when levels of tiny particles or ozone in the lower atmosphere reach unhealthy levels. 

Eau Claire has an Air Quality Index of 152, while Marathon is at 175, according to the DNR’s map. The higher that number, the more dangerous conditions are. The United States Environmental Protection Agency says an Air Quality Index of 101 to 150 can be unhealthy for those with some health conditions,  while 151 to 200 is unhealthy for the general public.

“We have a little bit higher concentrations of particulate matter and that can irritate people that are susceptible to problems like asthma or heart or lung disease, older adults or children,” Cronce said. “So try to stay indoors if you fall into that category.” 

Czarnecki said N95 masks can also help limit some of the impacts from wildfire smoke. The DNR has a website devoted to air quality resources. 

Central and northern Wisconsin are under an air quality advisory due to Canadian wildfire smoke, according to the National Weather Service in Sullivan.

In those portions of the state, people can see smoke in the sky, and in some areas, on ground level, said Mark Gehring, NWS meteorologist.

Visibilities are ranging from 4 to 7 miles in parts of west central and northern Wisconsin, as well as southern Minnesota, Gehring said.

“That’s from the smoke from the Canadian fires that flared back up now that spring has come,” he said. “And, those fires are kind of on the border of British Columbia and Alberta — the northern part of those provinces, so way up in northwest Canada.”

“People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion; everyone else should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion,” the advisory said.

The smoke could cause breathing issues for sensitive groups, Gehring explained. He recommended that sensitive groups in the effected areas should stay indoors as much as possible with their windows closed and limit time outside.

“Even for healthy people, if the concentrations get severe, you could have some effects from it,” he said.

While the advisory — which began Sunday afternoon — is set to expire at 10 a.m., Gehring anticipates that another will be issued. The state’s Department of Natural Resources will make that call after reassessing the situation.

With the smoke “really slowing down as it approaches southern Wisconsin,” Gehring didn’t expect it to reach the Milwaukee area Monday.

“Maybe a little bit tomorrow, but it may be just an upper atmosphere, too,” he said. “If it stays in the mid or upper levels of the atmosphere, then nobody’s effected by it. You’ll still see it in the sky, but it won’t effect ground level. That’s when there’s a bigger problem.”

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday in a case pushed by Democrats to overturn a ruling that all but eliminated the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in the swing state.

The court’s ruling will come within three months of the Aug. 13 primary and within six months of the November presidential election. A reversal could have implications on what is expected to be another razor-thin presidential race in Wisconsin.

President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Wisconsin by just under 21,000 votes in 2020, four years after Trump narrowly took the state by a similar margin.

Since his defeat, Trump had claimed without evidence that drop boxes led to voter fraud. Democrats, election officials and some Republicans argued the boxes are secure.

At issue is whether to overturn the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s July 2022 ruling that said nothing in state law allowed for absentee drop boxes to be placed anywhere other than in election clerk offices. Conservative justices controlled the court then, but the court flipped to liberal control last year, setting the stage to possibly overturn the ruling.

Changing the ruling now “threatens to politicize this Court and cast a pall over the election” and unleash a new wave of legal challenges, attorneys for the Republican National Committee and Wisconsin Republican Party argued in court filings.

There have been no changes in the facts or the law to warrant overturning the ruling and it’s too close to the election to make changes now anyway, they contend.

Democrats argue the court misinterpreted the law in its 2022 ruling by wrongly concluding that absentee ballots can only be returned to a clerk in their office and not to a drop box they control that is located elsewhere. Clerks should be allowed “to decide for themselves how and where to accept the return of absentee ballots,” attorneys argue in court filings.

Priorities USA, a liberal voter mobilization group, and the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Voters asked the court to reconsider the 2022 ruling. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which administers elections, support overturning it.

Attorneys for the groups that brought the challenge say in court filings that drop boxes became controversial only “when those determined to cast doubt on election results that did not favor their preferred candidates and causes made them a political punching bag.”

Election officials from four counties, including the two largest and most heavily Democratic in the state, filed a brief in support of overturning the ruling. They argue absentee ballot drop boxes have been used for decades without incident as a secure way for voters to return their ballots.

More than 1,600 absentee ballots arrived at clerks’ offices after Election Day in 2022, when drop boxes were not in use, and therefore were not counted, Democratic attorneys noted in their arguments. But in 2020, when drop boxes were in use and nearly three times as many people voted absentee, only 689 ballots arrived after the election.

Drop boxes were used in 39 other states during the 2022 election, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.

The popularity of absentee voting exploded during the pandemic in 2020, with more than 40% of all voters in Wisconsin casting mail ballots, a record high. More than 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee, the state’s two most heavily Democratic cities.