Yesterday, a series of thunderstorms moved through the central Cascades.
For example, the satellite-based lightning detection system at 2:30 PM yesterday showed several lightning strikes in the Mt. Rainier area (red markers are lightning strikes and shading indicates clouds)
Here is a close-up view at the same time. The tram to the top of Crystal Mountain was shut down due to lightning yesterday afternoon....and for good reason.
A lightning strike occurred during the next few minutes and by 2:50 PM some smoke was apparent...a fire had been started.
This morning there was no smoke or hint of the fire.
Perhaps this is due to the substantial amount of rain that fell with the series of convective storms, with a nearby location getting three-quarters of an inch (blue star shows the fire location).
The good news regarding this event is that it was wet enough that the many lightning strikes apparently did not start many new fires.
We had a front row seat of the impacts of one of these lightning strikes from the Crystal Mountain 360 Cam. I will show you a series of cam images looking toward the west-southwest, with Mt. Rainier on the left side.
At 2:20 PM, there were plenty of ominous clouds and some were precipitating. There was some lightning at this time (not apparent in this image).
At 3 PM flames were evident.
And the fire was putting out a lot of smoke at 3:10 PM
Perhaps this is due to the substantial amount of rain that fell with the series of convective storms, with a nearby location getting three-quarters of an inch (blue star shows the fire location).
The good news regarding this event is that it was wet enough that the many lightning strikes apparently did not start many new fires.
The recent rain is certainly better than nothing as far as reducing fire danger. The problem with this episode is that, while local showers dumped quite a bit, many areas of Eastern Washington got little or none and even in the places that got a good shower, these short duration downpours are not as effective in moistening the fuels as would a longer duration wetting rain. A return to warm, dry weather, which is in the forecast, will put most areas rather quickly back into the high fire danger potential that existed before the rain.
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