"The ongoing wildfire activity affecting portions of the western United States and western Canada continues to produce enormous amounts of smoke that covers most of Canada and the northern portion of the United States. The areas of densest smoke extend from western and southern British Columbia across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and southern Quebec in Canada and northern California, southern Oregon, all of the northern border states from Washington to Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri in the United States."
MODIS Aqua Satellite Image - Saturday Afternoon
PM2.5 monitoring has shown Good to Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups air quality across Western, South-Central, and South-East Washington counties today. Continued Unhealthy to Hazardous conditions have been monitored in the Central and North-Eastern counties. Conditions look to get progressively worse for western Washington as well as most other counties over the next few days.
Please protect you and your family from smoke if it is impacting your area. The Department of Health has relevant information here.
Smokey in Covington/ Maple Valley areas 7 pm Sunday 08/19
ReplyDeleteSmokey in Eatonville.8/19
ReplyDeleteSeptember 7,2018 shipping our motorcycle out to Seattle Washington to tour from West to East via interstate 90. My concern is fires and air quality. What do you advise ??
ReplyDeleteI realize you need to know now for planning purposes, but accurate forecasts cant be made that far out. In generic terms, the large number of fires in WA, ID and MT make it unlikely that your trip will be through smoke- free regions by then. Cannot really speak to how smoke transport from afar will look in 3 weeks, like the huge influx of smoke from Canada we're having right now.
DeleteIf you're able to delay the ride until after mid-September, you're more likely to end up breathing less smoke en route. Please take a few minutes to read through steps you can take to protect yourself from smoke, provided on this blog at http://wasmoke.blogspot.com/p/federal.html
Currently very unpleasant to drive in any open vehicle. Stinky rancid odor and very low visibility. Hurts eyes and lungs. I definitely won’t put the top down on my Jeep.
ReplyDeleteSunnyside Wa. is pretty smokey almost to hazardous levels.
ReplyDeleteOcean Park WA. Is the smoke from the fires connected to the increased fog along the WA coast. If yes, how?
ReplyDeleteThere is moderate to thick haze being generated from BC wildfires for some time now. This is most likely what you have been seeing. BC is having a record wildfire year that has generated thick smoke that can been seen from the Washington coast to the Great Lakes.
DeleteFederal Way has smoke haze... some odor. Trees two blocks distant are indistinct due to the light gray haze. It looks unhealthy!
ReplyDeleteIs the coastal fog attributed to the fires and smoke? Long Beach Peninsula has been unusually foggy and over cast the past 4 week's
ReplyDeleteThere is moderate to thick haze being generated from BC wildfires for some time now. This is most likely what you have been seeing.
DeleteEverett is horrible
ReplyDeleteHi - thank you so much for putting together these smoke updates, it's been very helpful. I was curious about the source of the "MODIS Aqua Satellite Image" from Saturday afternoon. I'm getting married on a trail in the paradise area of Mt Rainier National Park on Wednesday (8/22) and I'd like to take a gander at this image each day to get a better idea of the smoke coverage in mt rainier national park. I did some poking around on the NOAA website and couldn't find this image. Thanks again and I look forward to a response.
ReplyDeleteThe MODIS platforms pass over at 11 am (Terra) and 2 pm (Aqua) and generally the images are available about 2.5 hours after overpass on Worldview: https://go.nasa.gov/2La21Fm
DeleteYou might also like the GOES-East GeoColor product which is good enough to see smoke animations anytime of the day (usually about a 30 minute lag): https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/GOES16_sector_band.php?sector=pnw&band=GEOCOLOR&length=24
awesome. Thank you so much. Pray to the smoke gods for me because it stands thinks aren't looking great!
DeleteChico and Bremerton areas VERY smokey. Kept all SIX grandkids inside. So much fun! Any end in sight?
ReplyDeleteYou can expect most of the lingering smoke in your area to clear out on Thursday. You may even see some relief on Wednesday evening.
DeleteAsh is falling in Federal Way what fire is it coming from?
ReplyDeleteThat's tough to say, but it's likely from the Crescent Mountain fire https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6093/ or the Cougar Creek fire https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6053/ .
DeleteUniversity Place my eyes burning.
ReplyDeletePlanning a camping trip to Leavenworth WA tomorrow. Should I plan it for elsewhere? Any suggestions to a part of Washington that might be better?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't look good tomorrow for that general area, though there could be some clearing on Thursday. In general, the proximity to the Cougar Creek fire is not good if you are concerned about possible smoke. If you could go further southwest, that would be advisable. Keep in mind that the smoke distribution in our state will look quite different on Thursday morning.
DeleteTraveling with my son through Saturday innVancouver-Seattle. Do you see relief coming on Thu this week? Where can I learn more what is projected through Saturday?
ReplyDeleteThis is an old post, so you should take a look at the most recent content. Thursday in Seattle will be a transitional day with things hopefully clearing out by the end of the day. Vancouver should see good air quality sooner than that. Western Washington air quality in general should be good this weekend due to expected strong westerly winds bringing in marine air. Perhaps take a look at www.windy.com for a good idea of air flow in the coming days. I don't know of any good smoke forecasts that go out 4 days.
DeletePlease keep this site better up to date. Many official sites refer folks to this blog for more detailed information, but there isn't any. The air now maps show a forecast, but no time estimate of changes occuring throughout the day. Many air now regions have no additional info located in the right column. Just says "no data".
ReplyDeleteFirst, you're commenting on an old post. See the main blog page (http://wasmoke.blogspot.com) for the latest info. Second, there is no realistic way in which we can provide hourly forecasts for all cities across the state during smoke season. The AirNow product you are referring to carries forecasts only at a few locations, mostly in western WA.
DeleteFinally, we will consider your feedback and see what improvements can be made in future smoke seasons.