Sitting in my office right now, it smells like wildfire smoke.
Looking at the latest (4:30 PM) PurpleAir air quality map, one sees a narrow region of very poor air quality (red and purple colors) over North Seattle and southeast Snohomish County. Also Kirkland.
Why is this happening? A plume of dense smoke from the Wildcat Fire east of Mt. Rainier (see map below)
Take a look at the visible satellite image around 4 PM (below). You can see the plume of smoke drifting to the NW, reaching north Seattle and Snohomish County.
Want to be impressed? Here is the small particle concentrations at Lake Forecast Park, just north of Seattle, since June 1.
Wow. The highest particulate values of the whole summer...nothing is close.
The good news? The models are suggesting a significant change in the wind direction, which should bring relief to western Washington. And we will move to a cooler and wetter period, which will help suppress the fires.
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Announcement
I will hold a special online Zoom session at 10 AM on Saturday for Patreon supporters. Will answer questions and talk in detail about the end of summer and the wildfire situation.
So that explains today... That is, I went over in the 10AM hour to do a final watering of plants in pots, which include 2 Fuscias in hanging pots on their back deck and it was cloudy, foggy with whisps of fog rolling in so the fog thickens, then lightens up as I watered. Temps in the low 60's, but when I left to come home, the sun began to peak out but by 1pm, it was back behind clouds again.
ReplyDeleteThis is in the Tacoma area, the sun is kinda peaking out now at 5:44PM. The temps I think only made it to 75F today, according to the Weather Channel.
Now it's saying cloudy tomorrow 71 and rain in the morning, cloudy with the same temps for Sunday and Tuesday rain, 71, Monday, 75 and cloudy. with the rest of the days, through the 19th mid to upper 70's and partly cloudy. I'm sure that'll continue to change as we move forward.
Could the smoke be getting 'sandwiched' in a manner similar to a convergence zone?
ReplyDeleteAny speculation on the thunder tomorrow
ReplyDelete