It's late September and we've now passed the Fall equinox. With the longer, cooler nights and occasional precipitation chances, fire season is on its way out. But we're not completely out of the woods yet.
Strong Winds Today
In western Washington, this will bring periods of steady moderate-heavy rain -- especially in the Olympics and North Cascades. Good for knocking out any residual fire danger in those areas!
In eastern Washington, however, showers will be hit or miss. Most areas will not receive a wetting rain. Instead, strong winds are expected with potential for gusts near 40-45 mph this afternoon.
The wind combined with low relative humidity and warm temperatures east of the Cascades is spiking the 'Hot-Dry-Windy' index well above the 95th percentile for this time of year.
With that in mind, we'll need to keep an eye out for any new fires in some of the grass and sagebrush across the Basin. There is potential for rapid fire spread if anything sparks up. Additionally, areas of blowing dust and reduced visibility are possible with the strong winds.
Looking Ahead
Forest fire season will be coming to an end rapidly, especially on the west side of the state where significant precipitation is received. In eastern Washington, winds calm down after today, but dry weather continues through the weekend with additional strong winds possible next week. We generally won't be able to rule out additional fires in the grass/sagebrush through October, depending on weather and ignitions (or lack of ignitions). On the bright side, grass fires are typically put out quicker and have less smoke impacts than forest fires. We'll continue to monitor closely until fire season is completely over!
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