MINNEAPOLIS — Air quality alerts remain in effect for yet another day for the entire state of Minnesota with concentrations of wildfire smoke so thick the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued a rare hazardous warning.

The MPCA uses a color-coded scale when issuing alerts, with purple and maroon signaling when the air is the worst. On Tuesday, the agency issued a maroon warning for the northwest corner of the state and a purple warning for a large swath of northern and north-central Minnesota.

The agency has not issued a maroon warning since 2021, said Ryan Lueck, an air quality forecaster for the MPCA.

“This is not common,” Lueck, noting the air quality has reached such poor levels only “a handful of times” over the past decade. “It’s pretty rare.”

At 7 a.m. in Minneapo

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