Washington Smoke Information
Welcome to the Washington Smoke blog, a partnership between state, county, and federal agencies, and Indian Tribes. We coordinate to collectively share info for Washington communities affected by wildfire smoke. If the air monitoring map doesn't display here, links to additional monitoring maps can be found under the 'Monitoring & Forecasting' tab.
Residents in Central and Eastern WA welcomed the cleaner air today, as the lingering smoke from the past few days has mostly cleared out. The cool air and moist weather is expected to continue in the coming days, with little fire activity expected across the region. Residual smoke along the WA/ID border should continue clearing today and tomorrow. All air quality alerts across the state will expire today, except for Chelan county which was extended until 8 am on Friday. Unfortunately, Chelan county is still seeing moderate fire activity in their area, and fresh smoke is affecting towns like Plain, Leavenworth, Cashmere, Wenatchee, and Quincy.
There seems to be a running trend the past few years, where strong easterly winds contribute to a large smoke event in September, followed by several days of lingering smoke across the entire region. So, how bad was the smoke this summer? Compared to previous years, it seemed like there were less smoky days, but we definitely had some pretty bad days later in the summer. Check out the monitoring data comparison:
