Wildfire Smoke Returns to Western (and Eastern) Washington

Well, you knew it couldn't last. 

Wildfire smoke is back, but fortunately it should be relatively sparse and short-lived here in western Washington and Oregon.  Many of you noticed the arrival of a thin haze the last few days, a combination of smoke from Asia, Alaska and southern Canada. 

Here are two pictures from the SpaceNeedle cam at noon on August 1st and this morning (August 4th).   Can you see the difference?  Mt. Rainier is visible in one and not the other and the mountains are less distinct today.

Why worst today?  Because the upper trough over us moved out and a ridge of high pressure developed over the northeast Pacific, which resulted in northerly flow pushing south our of  Alaska (see upper level map at 2 PM on Saturday).

And now we have a new player...a major grass fire in eastern Washington west of Spokane on the Colville Reservation:  the Williams Flat fire.   Initiated by lightning on August 2nd, the fire is now over 10,000 acres and is filling eastern Washington with smoke...and a bit of it is heading towards Puget Sound! 

The GOES-17 visible satellite image around 7 AM  today really shows the smoke (see below), but keep in mind that the low sun angle at that hour really highlights the smoke.

The same satellite image around 1:30 PM is not as scary...you can see where the fire is and if you look closely you can see some thin smoke heading up Snoqualmie pass.

With this smoke blowing in from the north and east, air quality has started to deteriorate in the West. 

Below is the concentration of small particles (PM2.5), the kind that moves deep into your lungs, at Seattle from July 1 to today.  You will note the high values on July 4th and subsequent nights from formal and informal fireworks.  Subsequently, the values stay low, roughly around 6 (micrograms per cubic meter if you are interested).  Then yesterday it jumped to around 15 and stayed up...that is the smoke.    Nothing like the crazy values of last summer (which got over 100 for a few days), but noticeable in visibility.

The situation was much worse in Spokane, a short distance from the fire, where the small particles jumped to around 100 before the wind shifted and blew the smoke to the south.

What will happen next?  Most grass fires surge and die rapidly.  The latest NOAA/NWS HRRR smoke model forecast for 11 PM tonight, 11 AM Monday, and 11 PM Monday night suggests that most of the smoke will stay east of the Cascade crest and spread southward into Oregon and west into Idaho.

At this point, there is no reason to expect unhealthful air quality in western Washington or Oregon...but stayed tuned.

EPIC: The Last Chance for National Weather Service Weather Modeling to Regain Leadership?

I have written at least a dozen blogs, a peer-reviewed paper, and given tens of conference talks on the unfortunate state of numerical weather prediction in the National Weather Service (which is part of NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration).

The bottom line:  U.S. global weather prediction is in third place in the world. The plot below shows a comparison of the skill of the 5-day model forecast for the U.S. (red line) and the European Center (black line) at a mid-tropospheric level (500 hPa).   We are not only behind, but we are not catching up.

And more importantly than that, our weather prediction is substantially behind the state-of-the science.   That means not providing warnings of severe weather as far ahead as we could.  It means an economy that is not benefiting from the best weather guidance (such as agriculture and aircraft routing). There are real national costs to this.

 I have explained the origin of the problems in previous blogs.  They include:

1.  Too many Federal agencies  or government-supported labs trying to do the same thing (NOAA/NWS, Air Force, NASA, Navy, NCAR)

2.  The academic community working on different models than used by NOAA/NWS.

3.  Poor organization within NOAA, with multiple groups having responsibility for weather prediction.

4.  Lack of strategic planning.

5.  Lack of sufficient computer resources.

6.  No priority for excellence.

It has been kind of depressing.  The nation with a huge weather research capability and ability to zoom ahead of the pack, stuck in third rate status.

But there is a rare chance right now, the best in decades.  The stars are aligned.   And there is a critical meeting next week that might well decide which path the nation takes.  And it is all about EPIC.

Why are the stars aligned?

1.   The leadership of NOAA want to fix the problem.

2.  The U.S. public and the U.S. Congress know there is a problem, with Congress even passing legislature (with funding) calling for major change.

3.  The head of NOAA is a weather modeler (Neil Jacobs), as is the President's Science Advisor (Kelvin Drogemaier)

4.  The private sector is demanding improvement.

5.  THERE IS BIPARTISAN AGREEMENT ABOUT THIS.

Perhaps best of all, recent weather legislation calls for the development of national EPIC center, that would centralize U.S. efforts to build the best global forecast models in the world.  (EPIC stands for Environmental Prediction Innovation Center).

Next week there is going to be a meeting on the nature of the EPIC that will take place in Boulder, Colorado.  An absolutely crucial gathering--I will be giving a talk there and are part of the organizing committee.

Will self-interest, disciplinary fiefdoms, and legacy administrative structures give way to rational, more effective approach for developing U.S. weather modeling systems?   We may know the answer in one week.

And this may be the last chance for NOAA.  Private sector companies are in the wing that will take on global weather prediction if NOAA fails to advance to first tier.    Not Space-X but Weather-X.  And the U.S. Air Force already abandoned the U.S. modeling system for a non-American model (UKMET Office Unified Model).  When the U.S. military gives up the American model, you know you have a problem.  I will let all of you know what happens.