We start to warm up Thursday and more Friday with a fairly hot weekend expected.

We start to warm up Thursday and more Friday with a fairly hot weekend expected.

I don’t think it will be as hot — or as smokey — as our last run of heat, but there’s some uncertainty surrounding that.

I recently took some time off in the cascades, and the levels of fuels and standing dead pine is striking to say the least. It’s a strange feeling knowing our forests need cycles of fire to remain healthy, but also knowing if we get ignitions it’s not going to be anything “controlled” with smoke and AQI into extreme levels for all of us.

That said, red flag conditions return to most of the cascades this weekend with two impacts of note, low RH (humidity), and eastern downslope winds beginning Thursday night (not Whidbey — this is for the Cascades). A third situation is a decent shot of overnight thunderstorms Thursday into Friday for the mountains too.

If we don’t see any new fires in the cascades from these aspects converging, I’m not expecting AQI on whidbey to be any worse than it was last week.

We will need to see how the Cascades fare during this next run of red flag conditions…

Whidbey looks relatively cooler than anywhere else around the Salish. I don’t think we’ll be over 90F but likely in the 80s sat/sun.

Will update Thursday on the fire conditions in the mountains.

#wawx #wasmoke #redflag #AQI