Smoke Aloft Impacting Western Washington

If you looked outside this morning, you saw hazy skies. That is smoke from California fires impacting Western Washington. Thankfully, this smoke is aloft, or not near the surface.

According to forecasts, smoke will likely settle some in the next day or two. Additionally, the overall pattern looks favorable for this California smoke to continue impacting our area through the next few days.

This smoke made its way in Tuesday night. You can see the boundary between the smoke aloft and the clear skies in this photo I took at sunset on Tuesday.

Now (Wednesday morning), that smoke is covering our skies with haze. Let's take a look at the HRRR Smoke forecast model data to see what we can expect.

Here is the vertically integrated smoke (smoke in a column of the atmosphere) at 9 AM Wednesday.

Almost the entire state of Washington is covered by this smoke. You can see the upper level smoke starting to wrap clockwise around a high pressure area in Central Oregon. The smoke is quite thick from Northern California all the way into British Columbia.

Here is the near-surface smoke at the same time (9 AM Wednesday).

You'll notice very thick near-surface smoke in Northern California, with smoke concentrations increasing in Western Oregon, the Cascades & Olympics, and in Western Washington.

Here is one more view, a smoke cross section for 9 AM Wednesday. The mountains on the left are the Olympics, then Puget Sound in the middle, and the Cascade mountains on the right.

This is the best view of the smoke. You can see the thick smoke aloft above the entire area. Notice how smoke is thickening some in the Puget Sound area. That is expected to continue through Wednesday. 

Here is 5 PM Wednesday. 

Smoke aloft is still heavy across the area. Low-level smoke is still impacting Puget Sound. The smoke aloft will slowly move out through Thursday, but another wave of California smoke will be pushing north. 

Expect that low-level smoke to continue through at least Thursday, as it will be harder to clear than the upper-level smoke.

Now let's talk air quality. Here is Puyallup's 9 AM reading.

Currently in the "moderate" category. This means that if you are extremely sensitive to smoke, you should not be outside. Everyone else is good to go. Expect air quality to stay in the moderate category through Wednesday. Some places could see it move to "unhealthy for sensitive groups" but that all depends on how much smoke settles to the ground.

This smoke event is not expected to be like our massive smoke event 2 weeks ago. This smoke will be more of a nuisance than a major problem.