Beneficial rainfall over the weekend and through Labor Day continues to be good news for firefighters battling several major wildfires in central Washington.
The Little Giant Fire north of Leavenworth and west of Lake Chelan continues to burn, though smoke output has dropped considerably since mid-August. Moderate air quality is expected through Monday evening and into Tuesday around Chelan, while air quality remains good across most other areas.
We’ll see warmer and drier weather through Wednesday and into Thursday east of the Cascades, so some additional wildfire smoke could drift into the area. However, significant smoke impacts are not expected. West of the Cascades, air quality should remain in the good to moderate range.
As wildfire season slowly winds down and additional rain chances arrive later this week and beyond, we’ll likely see fewer days with poor air quality. However, as Pacific weather systems move inland, locally strong winds may occasionally create challenges near active fires.
The longer-range outlook for mid-September favors above-average temperatures with near-average precipitation. However, we’ll still need to watch for weather systems that could bring thunderstorms to the mountains and areas east of the Cascades, as September rainfall so far has not been sufficient to fully extinguish the fires.
We would expect additional rainfall as we move closer to October and our typical fall storm season.