Smoke from Canadian wildfires has sent a blanket of smoke over the midwestern United States this weekend. The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued air quality alerts for Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as, Iowa, Illinois Michigan, and parts of Nebraska and Missouri.

"A lot of the prairies within Canada, the prairie provinces, entered the fire season already starting out in a drought, and so there wasn't a lot of moisture throughout the winter," said Alex Jones a communications manager at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.

Smoke from wildfires blazing across Canada is once again wafting over huge portions of the U.S. Midwest and worsening air quality there. On August 1 conditions are particularly bad in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.