Has anybody paid attention to temp trends in the Pacific NW and BC? record highs for days on end, highest averages for the bulk of the year and little snow and virtually no rain for months. Wild fire danger is at of the scale highs. BC currently has ~150 active fires scattered all over the province. Enough fire activity that the Air Quality in Vancouver and N.W Washington are at extreme danger level. The smoke so thick that out door activity is strongly discouraged. I am going to go on the record that by saying on th is date,(and we are just at the beginning of the average fire season) that by seasons end we will have had an epic fire season like we have never seen before, both in the traditionally arid interior of BC and the PAC NW as well as the normally wet coastal zone. In fact there are already significant active fires in the rain forest on the Olympic Penninsula as well as normally damp Vancouver island. Climate change or not, it is and is going to be a very scary summer. (not good for fish either as the river levels are very low and very warm. Icarus
A couple of days ago, there was a full moon, red: Source: NWS explains red moon in HSV - WAFF-TV: News, Weather and Sports for Huntsville, AL They (The National Weather Service of Huntsville RJW) say the moon was red because of smoke from wildfires in Canada. The multiple wildfires in the Canadian Providences of Saskatchewan and Alberta sent a large plume of smoke into the Central U.S. The smoke then reached the Mid-South by Tuesday afternoon which caused the hazy sky. WAFF meteorologist David Ernst said the smoke plumes will also lead to the sun being more obscured than it normally would be with the high clouds overhead I can tell you we enjoyed the cool weather that made the nights tolerable. In effect, the smoke tinted the air, keeping the solar heating down a bit too. But the problem is real: Animated GIF showing history since March: http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom_loop.gif Bob Wilson
Our fire season actually had a slow start, but started ramping up last week. So dry, even a Washington rain forest is burning
A slow start to be sure, but an early start however. The old axiom "when does summer start in Seattle?". July 5th. All joking aside, the potential fire behavior is very scary. Small fires in normally damp coastal zones are now turning very quickly into crowning fires, something almost unheard of in temperate rain forest envirionments. Icarus
No, it wasn't an early start, as shown by this chart through May 31 using historic data from the National Interagency Fire Center. By that date, the burned acreage was the second lowest of the past decade: http://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/US-wildfire-acres-by-date-and-year.jpg I'm not seeing an equivalent chart on the NIFC's own website, so don't know just when we surpassed the average curve, probably some time in June. But as of today (July 6), the burn area has jumped well above average, behind only 2011 and 2006. And the trend is not looking good. National Interagency Fire Center
While the NIFC numbers are showing the nation as a whole running at higher than normal burn area for this point in the fire season, other agencies are showing the Pacific Northwest and California running below average: Cliff Mass Weather Blog: A Real Surprise: FEWER Acres Than Normal Have Burned over the Northwest This Year In summary, total fire numbers are up, but acres are down. Small human-caused fires in easily accessible areas are up (e.g. grass fires along the highways), but government fire response is very good this year. Low rates of lightning activity have kept down the rate of large natural fires in less accessible areas. But fire season still has a very long way to go ...
Puget Sound water temps, affected by the North Pacific warm Blob are ~5 degrees above normal. This is huge, as the average water temp varies very little over the year. Part of the reason the climate in the Puget sound area is so delightful (usually) in the summer. Water temps average ~ 53F Currently as high as 60f in some places. Icarus
What a difference three weeks makes, the height of the fire season finally arrived. Human-caused fires ran wider, as I saw while supporting a week long bicycle event through the Columbia Gorge two weeks ago. We saw lots of evidence of roadside fires, and spent two days just barely behind major firefighting efforts. A single day's shift would have forced contingency rerouting plans as fires burned over the road. Fortunately, we only had to move a single lunch stop, taken over by a firefighting camp, and many of us got light showers as helicopter water buckets filling up in the Columbia River flew over the road and up into the mountains. Truck logos represented public agencies and private firms from all over the state. Then the thunderstorms came. The fires are really going now, multiple entire towns evacuated, and red flag warnings are out most of the Pacific Northwest: all of Washington east of the Cascade crest, most of eastern Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, and big chunks of NE Utah and western Montana. Substantial winds expected tomorrow afternoon. Three US Forest Service employees dead yesterday near Winthrop, more injured. Seattle Times: When fire chief called for help, and no one was left All neighboring, county, and state fire personnel were already tied down at other fires.
