The wildfire smoke in Washington state has been extreme for days now, and many are wondering just when the air might clear out. An atmospheric scientist from the Washington Department of Ecology thinks the severe wildfire smoke may start to clear out a bit by Thursday for the western part of the state, but linger longer in the east. According to Ranil Dahmmapala, “The good news is from the weekend onward, there’s a good chance for a pattern shift, and we might have southwest winds to blow some of the smoke away and keep the British Columbia smoke away for a while.”
Mr. Dahmmapala says that, compared to previous years, smoke from the fires is unprecedented in the number of people exposed to bad air quality. He says there was no good air quality recorded at any of the air monitors in Eastern Washington on Monday, with most locations reading unhealthy.