Strong Winds Cause Major Expansion of Eastern Washington Wildfires

As feared, the great enhancement of cool, westerly winds caused a large increase in eastern Washington wildfires, with the Little Giant Fire expanding to Lake Chelan.

The change in visible satellite imagery yesterday shows the major changes

Early in the day Saturday, you can see the smoke from a few fires in eastern Washington, with the Little Giant Fire possessing only a modest amount of smoke.  Lots of low clouds in western Washington.

But later in the afternoon, as strong winds surged into eastern Washington, the fires exploded, with massive smoke plumes.

Here is a close-up at the same time.

The satellite image this morning shows a massive smoke cloud from the Little Giant fire extending into Montana and beyond.

Satellite sensors can pick up the emission from fires, and this morning's image of the Little Giant fire indicates a rapid spread of flames to the east, with some fire reaching Lake Chelan.

As noted earlier, this major fire blowup was associated with strong winds resulting from the movement of cooler, onshore flow into the region.  Cooler air associated with a Pacific weather system.

Below are the maximum winds over the region on Saturday.   At several locations,  wind reached 40-50 mph.

Zooming in to the area of the Little Giant fire, multiple locations surged to around 50 mph.

The strong winds were accompanied by profound cooling, something shown by the 24-hour temperature change (ending 6 AM this morning).  

Many locations were 20F cooler!  

The strong winds also resulted in some fire expansion near Spokane, which was picked up by weather radar yesterday:

The winds will calm down today, and the fire growth should greatly decline.   

In any case, this event illustrated the profound danger of lightning, dry fuels, and wind.  Often our big fires are associated with cooling weather, not heat waves.

But one thing has profoundly changed.   Our ability to PREDICT the winds is immensely better than 20 years ago, allowing far more effective preparation and protection for such events.