Good news: The rainy season is almost upon us. Forecasts are looking very promising for a fall storm arriving later this week.
Bad news: We still have to get through a few more days of smoke impacts before the rain arrives.
This morning's satellite image:
In Western Washington, light winds will lead to continuing smoke impacts from the lingering fires in the north Cascades, with the potential for unhealthy for sensitive groups to unhealthy in the Puget Sound region. Poor air quality near active fires (including the Loch Katrine, Suiattle, and Bolt Creek fires) will continue this week as well.
In Southwest Washington, the Nakia Creek Fire is currently contributing to deteriorating air quality.
Rainy and windy conditions begin on Friday.
East of the Cascades, smoke impacts will continue in already impacted areas, including the Wenatchee and Methow Valleys, ranging from moderate to unhealthy, with the heaviest impacts near active fires. Light winds are likely to persist through Thursday until the fall precipitation event begins and continues through the weekend.
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Most of the Air Quality Alerts that were in place over the weekend have been extended through Thursday.
Is there any chance we will see brief improvements overnight/in the early morning as the typical pattern has been lately?
ReplyDeleteIt depends on your location. Typically the smoke production peaks during the warmest part of the day, but if you are in close proximity to fires, a cool/shallow air layer can keep smoke trapped at night. Generally for the Puget Sound lowland area, there appears to be some potential clearing on Wednesday afternoon/evening, with some marine air pushing in. Thursday could be the end of wildfire smoke (this year) for Puget Sound area (crossing fingers).
DeleteWhy are all the forecasts continuing to say that up near Bellingham and the border it's going to be "moderate" today when yesterday in the middle of the day through at least now, we've been living in Unhealthy to Very Unhealthy numbers? Right now, it's 180 AQI and gonna be that way all day. What gives with the completely missed and continually missed forecast? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAutomated forecast methodology is described here: https://enviwa.ecology.wa.gov/Documents/SmokeForecast.pdf Manual forecast updates on this site occur at 6 am, 8 am, 10 am, and noon. Noone is working to update forecasts manually at 6 am, so normally you would see "today's" forecast get updated at 8 or 10 am during workdays.
DeletePlease note that for the Bellingham area, NWCAA is currently submitting forecasts to AirNow, which overrides any automated or manual forecast provided by Ecology. Currently NWCAA has "Moderate" forecast, but I will reach out to them and see if they can update it.
DeleteCharlie, someone on the Cliff Mass blog introduced me to iqair.com, and it's so much more accurate than airnow.gov, that I won't even mess with any other site besides airiq now. Wondering if you have heard of that one. And yeah, it's not the least bit confusing at all when the moderator here says a manual update is done at 6 a.m. and then in the very next sentence, literally says nobody is doing manual updates at 6 a.m. These explainers... sometimes. Like what exactly are we being told here. If I found that confusing then other readers did too. Anyway I hope you get relief soon. I ran off to the central Oregon coast and it's still rated USG down here sometimes and moderate at other times. Sounds like it's a lot worse up there though.
DeleteI apologize my explanation was unclear, I was hoping the commenter would read the forecast methodology document which gives context to my comment. To be clear, any manual updates to the forecast are ingested into the display tool at 6 am, 8 am, 10 am, and noon (on an automated schedule). Obviously if noone is working at 6 am, there are no manual forecasts to update. Unfortunately, the person who built the current forecast system no longer works for Ecology, but they would often get up at 5:30 in the morning to do manual updates to the automated forecast. The machine learning bias correction also updates at the same frequency (4 times each morning). To be clear, no one person has control over the entire forecast map... it requires coordination across multiple agencies. Please read the forecast methodology document and if there are any other questions I am happy to try to answer them.
DeleteThanks for the clarification
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