SerpApi.Org
Wildfire smoke will be blowing into Pierce County from parts of Eastern Washington this week.
Though the smoke will not be as dense as it is in northeastern Washington, Pierce County residents might see haze in the sky this week as the wind pattern drifts some of the wildfire smoke westward, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Logan Howard. Howard stated that this is the most smoke the NWS has seen in the state all year.
“The last couple of years, we’ve been having a lot of fires, so we can definitely see smoke in Western Washington,” Howard told The News Tribune on Tuesday morning. “Certainly not out of the ordinary.”
The smoke coming into western Washington is mainly due to the Kaiser Canyon Fire and the Modrite Fire, scorching over 62,000 and 6,000 acres respectively. These fires are burning in Okanogan and Ferry counties in northeastern Washington, straddling the Canadian border. An update Monday morning from the Washington Smoke Blog stated that both fires grew “substantially” throughout the weekend. In Western Washington, a majority of the smoke is projected to stay high in the atmosphere with “minimal surface-level impacts,” according to the WA Smoke Blog.
Counties across eastern Washington as well as Whatcom and Skagit counties have issued Air Quality Alerts due to fires in both Washington and British Columbia. As of Tuesday morning, an alert had not been issued form Pierce County.
Howard said there would be a more “robust onshore flow” by Thursday. Wind coming in from the ocean will be flowing into the area, helping push the smoke back out east.
