It’s another PinPoint Alert Day for smoky and hot weather today. There is an Air Quality Alert for a good portion of Western Washington and a Heat Advisory for most of the area, with temps expected to be in the 80s and low-90s today.
Air quality reports are all over the place to start the day. Some northerly wind at the surface continues to keep a pocket of moderate to good air quality over parts of Puget Sound and north. However, most of the air quality readings are in the moderate to unhealthy for sensitive group range, with pockets of unhealthy air east of I-5 and for parts of the South Sound. The bottom line is, our air quality is impacted now and will be all day.
Smoke and haze should increase a bit more during the day today, but then the offshore wind will ease, cutting off more smoke from filtering in tonight. That doesn’t mean what we have in place will just disappear. Instead, we’ll have plenty of smoke and haze around tomorrow, slowly improving a bit later in the day and into Friday. There just won’t be smoke from Eastern Washington filtering in after today.
Smoky skies will be a persistent problem through at least Thursday morning, with heat building across Western Washington as well. Highs today through Thursday will be in the mid 80s to near 90°.
There is some question as to whether smoke might cut incoming sunshine enough for high temperatures to be cut down a few degrees, but it will still be very uncomfortable over the next few days for those without air conditioning, with the smoke also a problem for opening windows for cooling.
The timing of when smoke will fully clear is uncertain but we will have some improvement in spots by Thursday afternoon and evening as onshore flow starts to pick up (though not keeping us from having one more very hot day Thursday.)
On Thursday night and Friday, air quality will improve west of the Cascades, though winds will increase east of the mountains. This will pose another very high wildfire threat in central and eastern Washington to end the week.
By this weekend, Western Washington will have fresher air, milder temperatures in the 70s and some low 80s and sunshine at times. It will become breezy into the weekend east of the Cascades. Next week looks dry and seasonably warm. Some elevated wildfire smoke might drift west of the Cascades from time to time, but troublesome winds don’t look likely at this point.
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