Minnesota as a Refuge From Climate Change? Three Wildfires Show Otherwise.

Bernie Tanski and Cliff Eng drove through the dense conifer forests of northeastern Minnesota this week to check if their cabin had survived the flames.

The two friends have been fishing and deer hunting for decades in the lake-rich wilderness roughly 50 miles north of where they live in Duluth. But the rural vacation home they own together was threatened for days by major wildfires that exploded in size amid unusually warm and dry conditions. Eventually the fires subsided enough for the two men to briefly visit the home and see that it was OK.

“We’ve seen lots of little fires but nothing like this,” said Mr. Tanski, 80, a retired schoolteacher. The possibility that a fire could become so large, Mr. Eng, 84, said, “wasn’t on our radar.”

Three fast-growing wildfires that erupted this week in rural northern Minnesota have consumed more than 32,000 acres and destroyed an estimated 150 structures, serving as a kind of wake-up call for residents who often see their state as spared from the very worst of disasters fueled by climate change.

In recent years, residents of California, Colorado and New Mexico seeking refuge from heat waves and wildfires have been moving to “climate-proof Duluth.” The effects of climate change in the Midwest have perhaps seemed less terrifying than elsewhere; Minnesota’s bone-chilling winters, for example, have recently transformed into unseasonably pleasant, even snowless affairs.

But these latest wildfires underscore that the warming climate is also making disasters more likely in Minnesota as wildfire season — a fact of life in the state — is becoming longer and more severe, experts say. The same trend has begun to emerge in several other states not known for their fires, including Wisconsin, Georgia and the Carolinas.