One of the most interesting aspects of the current smoke/fire event is that it is occurring during a cold wave.
Over the past few days, temperatures in eastern Washington have been well below normal.
Not a heat wave associated with global warming. A cold wave with strong winds.
My God!
Several locations dropped into the mid-30s! Since such temperatures are measured around 6 feet, the surface temperatures could have dropped to freezing!
Smoke and ice...what a combination.
The surface temperature analysis for Sunday at 4 PM shows the very cold temperatures over the northwest. Burr.....
Here are plots of Sunday and Monday morning temperatures around 5000 ft (850 hPa pressure). Blue is colder than normal.
Blue shows heights below normal (a trough).
The forecast surface smoke (NOAA HRRR Smoke model) for 11 PM tonight is good for western Washington, unchanged for the rest of the region. Really bad near the Little Giant Fire near Lake Chelan.
Currently, air quality is good in western Washington, with any smoke staying aloft, moderate in the Willamette Valley, and poor in eastern Washington (see below).
That part of the Eastern Cascades has been really hard-hit in the last couple decades. There was the Wolverine Creek fire in 2015 which basically reduced the upper Entiat valley to sand and rock. I hiked through there a couple years ago and saw the aftermath. If I remember right, there had been a couple fires in the lower Entiat in the decade before that fire. Now they're getting the Little Giant fire crossing the ridge into the lower Entiat River again, and crossing the next ridge to Lake Chelan. It must be big because apparently there has been enough updraft to loft some embers across the lake and the fire is spreading into the Chelan-Sawtooth wilderness. Enough! What will it take to reverse this trend of ever-increasing fires?
ReplyDeleteIt's not an ever-increasing trend in Entiat. I grew up there and it all burned over repeatedly. This is nothing compared to what happened in the early 70's. It burned all of upper Entiat to the ground. Much of upper Entiat was high intensity burns with just dead trees and ash remaining. It did it again closer to the Columbia River in the Dinkelman Fires in 1989 and again in the Tyee Complex in 1994. We just have short memories. This is actually pretty typical fire behavior for Eastern Washington. The Tyee Complex burned 285,000 acres. It was a huge fire but, again, nothing compared to the fires in the early 70's.
DeleteThank you for the historical perspective…
DeleteJeff- The early 70's? I moved here in 1972 and the 70's seemed like a relatively moist, low- fire period by comparison. True, I was a teenager and not as astute about it at the time but I do remember that smoke in the western part of the state was unusual. Do you mean the 1930's? Cliff said that was a really smoky period.
DeleteIn 1970 there were three major fires in the Entiat Valley. The worst was up closer to Silver Falls. They only show the map of the fire in the Entiat Valley but I know that fire spread quite far. We used those old firebreaks in the Tyee fire in 1994. I just found a really interesting article done by the DNR specifically on fires in the Entiat Valley. Look at page 20 for a rough map of the historical fires in the last 50 years. Here is the link: https://dnr.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-03/rp_burn_cwpp_entiatvalley.pdf Has some pretty interesting pictures. Good article. Also, if you look up the Little Giant fire going right now it is hitting nearly the same firelines as the Tyee Complex did in 1994.
DeleteThe smoke layer is just below the Little Si peak.
ReplyDelete“Some say the world will end in fire, some in ice.” Or perhaps both? Hopefully the heat & smoke won’t last long.
ReplyDeleteWhat was humidity looking like in Eastern WA? Heard reports on the radio of 15-20% humidity in Spokane before the fires.
ReplyDeleteSo yesterday I was gonna take a screenshot of the life temperature map to tell my brother back east... these fires are in eastern Washington not where we're at. They get very hot weather there compared to us and I took a look at their temperatures... and they were in the 60s, I'm like there goes that narrative
ReplyDeleteI had 49° in morning other day. Hot during day cool to cold at night. Radiation cooling at its finest. We are dessert, just like any dessert can die from heat during the day or freeze to death at night. We don'thave luxuary of moderated ocean air moving in. Think i even saw someone post they got frost other night. Come Thursday take the live temp in afternoon when we are in 100s again.
DeleteI wonder, then, is this part of the definition of the term "fire weather" that is used lately. Does that term have a technical definition?
ReplyDeleteI went on the radars to see the smoke movement as it heads east to west and notice this Crazy thin line of radar echo's screaming west to east in N Cal ,very weird, I saved Gif's. of it off the Noaa site.
ReplyDeleteChelan Fire exploding. This is why I rarely leave the safety of my man cave
ReplyDeleteHi Cliff, I was hearing this cold front, and thus the wind which worsened the fires in Spokane, blamed on climate change. Or at least that climate change plays a role in the frequency of such fronts. What would you say about that claim? Thanks for your work!
ReplyDelete