Smoke could linger through end of week: incoming rain ‘won’t do much for us’
In a year of bad news, here’s some more: wildfire smoke choking the Tacoma-Seattle area could linger through the end of the week.
Forecasters thought the air quality might improve by Monday morning, but that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to.
“Sad to say, the clearing that should have been here by now is not only tardy but is poofing out as a lackluster weather feature that won’t do much for us,” the Washington State Department of Ecology wrote on the Washington Smoke Blog.
Air quality in Tacoma was listed as unhealthy Monday, according to Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.
In fact, the cleanest air in the state is “unhealthy.”
There’s still a chance of rain through Wednesday but it will be light, spotty and not nearly enough to move out the smoke, according to the National Weather Service.
Plus light southerly winds are expected, and that will bring in more smoke from the Oregon wildfires.
The problem, according to meteorologist Cliff Mass, is an inversion.
Although the air above about 5,000 feet is improving, most of the smoke remains down low because it is caught in an inversion.
“We are probably past the worst smoke concentrations and air quality is very slowly improving,” Mass wrote on his blog. “That is probably the story for the rest of today. Slow improvement. And it appears that this will be the story for Tuesday as well.”
With the smoke blotting out the sun, highs are in the 60s this week.
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 8:44 AM.
