Aug. 23, 2021

Good evening,

More evacuations of homes and cabins are underway in northeastern Minnesota's Lake County as the Greenwood Fire continues to spread. Incident management team spokesperson Clark McCreedy says dry conditions and southwesterly winds are hampering efforts to contain the fire, which jumped a major highway today.

Greenwood is the largest fire burning in Minnesota's Arrowhead region and a huge plume is visible on satellite images of the area. Smaller fires in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness prompted the Forest Service to close the popular canoe area this week.

In pandemic news, state officials say they've given out tens of thousands of gift cards to people who got COVID vaccinations under a new state incentive program.

Gov. Tim Walz says the program has wrapped up after three weeks and will send out nearly 80,000 gift cards for $100 to people who got a first vaccine dose. A statement from the Walz administration says the program got a good response from some of the areas of the state with the lowest vaccination rates — some of them lagging from the statewide per-capita average by as much as 16 percentage points. The state initially authorized $2.5 million for the incentives but added nearly $14 million more to pay Minnesotans to get vaccinated.

State officials say the seven-day first dose daily average has nearly doubled over the course of the incentive program. About 58 percent of all Minnesotans have now had at least one shot of a COVID vaccine.

Tonight will be mostly clear with a chance of thunderstorms west after midnight. Expect lows in the upper 40s and upper 50s north and upper 60s south. Tomorrow: warm and muggy again with developing storms.

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