You may notice a little more haze across the area today, but fortunately, most of the smoke will remain elevated and shouldn’t have much, if any, impact on air quality. We’re seeing mostly good air quality this morning, with some moderate readings in spots, and a little smoke could mix closer to the surface near the Cascades and north of Everett. Overall, though, this is not shaping up to be a significant low-level smoke event, and the haze should gradually move out of the region Friday night into the weekend.
The bigger concern is fire danger, especially in the mountains and across eastern Washington. A few isolated showers and thunderstorms will develop around the Cascades this afternoon and evening, bringing another round of lightning to areas where fuels are very dry. The thunderstorm activity should be more isolated than what we saw yesterday, but any lightning strike could still spark a new fire.
Closer to home, we’ll have morning low clouds followed by plenty of afternoon sunshine with highs in the 70s to low 80s west of the Cascades.
The weekend looks fairly quiet, with morning low clouds giving way to afternoon sunshine and highs around 80°. There’s still a slight chance for an afternoon mountain shower or thunderstorm, but the threat looks pretty low.