After a relatively smoke-free summer, the region is now engulfed in smoke from a series of fires caused by dry lightning. Fortunately, major changes are coming, including cooler temperatures and precipitation that should decrease the smoke during the next few weeks.
The visible satellite image this morning was stunning (see below), with much of eastern Washington in smoke, some of it moving aloft across the Cascades into western Washington.
We can see the fires from satellites, and the satellite imagery from last night is shown below (red dots). The Bear Creek fire is not evident (it is just smoldering), but several fires are apparent east of the Cascade crest. Unusually few fires in California. It has been a very low fire year so far to the south of us.
The eastern WA fires have degraded air quality there (see Purple Air map this morning, red and purple are the bad air locations). With most of the smoke aloft, western Washington generally has decent air quality, with the worst around Bellingham.
Temperatures will greatly decline on BOTH sides of the Cascades to normal levels as shown by the forecast at Seattle and Pasco below.
The most interesting challenge during the next few days is the potential for thunderstorms, which could start rolling in tomorrow and will continue over the weekend.
To illustrate, below is the simulated radar imagery from the ultra-high resolution UW weather model.
For Friday at 5 PM, a major area of thunderstorms/convection is over Oregon.
For Saturday at the same time, Oregon thunderstorms, plus some getting into Washington, on both sides.
Such thunderstorms will bring rain and the potential to start a few more fires where dry lightning occurs. Will talk more about such issues in my next blog.
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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.
Let pumpkin spice weather effervescent and we’ll be marinating in gloom sooner than later until at least april
ReplyDeleteCooler and less muggy today than yesterday with better air quality. It may be the case that the smoke remains aloft due to the temperature inversion (it is nearly 20 degrees warmer at the ski area than in town at present). No indication of substantial/dry season-ending precipitation for the foreseeable future, though.
ReplyDeleteThe current dry lightning and fire outbreak is very similar to the August 1970 fires that I experienced as a fire weather forecaster at Wenatchee that year. That 1970 episode was also a nocturnal lightning event with little rain and it started many fires in about the same area of the Cascades as this one. One major difference may be that the 1970 outbreak was followed by a couple periods of stronger westerly winds which ended up spreading those fires to over 100,000 acres. It does not look like we will get a dry westerly flow on the current fires and with cooler, more moist air expected in a few days, there may not be as large a loss. However, the fact that these fires are still spreading rather quickly without significant wind, indicates how dry the fuels are this year. Finally, we may have to acknowledge that the Seattle Times and other organizations that predicted a bad fire year for this year, were correct, at least for Washington State.
ReplyDelete