Tired of smoky skies? Here’s how heavy rain this weekend will clear things up in Olympia
Hold on, Olympia - there’s rain at the end of the smoke-filled tunnel.
Wildfire smoke from the 8 Road Fire near Eatonville and several other fires east of Puget Sound have been causing smoky skies and overnight inversions around Olympia this past week.
But a weekend full of rain is forecast for Olympia, and Puget Sound as a whole, which will help douse some fires and clear out the smoke.
“It looks like we’re probably going to see around at least an inch for some of the lowlands,” Trent Davis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle, told The Olympian on Wednesday.
“For Olympia, it looks like mostly the rain is going to start on Friday morning and then pick up in intensity into Friday afternoon and into the overnight, Friday night into Saturday,” Davis continued.
According to the Weather Service, rain is also forecast to return to Olympia on Sunday.
Davis said that Olympia and surrounding areas could expect around an inch of rain, making it the first significant rainfall in the region since 1.14 inches fell on June 10. Some areas farther east at higher elevations could also see their first snow of the season, Davis said.
How will this help clear out the smoke?
It’s been an endless summer for the Evergreen State, with hot and dry conditions persisting deep into October contributing to the continued wildfire threat.
Washington is yet to see a substantial storm system pass through in October because of a Rex block, or a blocking pattern, sitting directly over the region. A Rex block is when a high-pressure and low-pressure system sits directly north and south of one another, forcing westerly winds and storms from the Pacific Ocean to be pushed north and into Canada.
That blocking pattern has finally subsided, allowing those westerly winds to blow inland from the west and bring moisture into the region.
Rain from the storms will naturally help extinguish the flames around Puget Sound, but it’s not just the rain that is helping.
“The wind shifts with more appreciable westerly winds are going to bring in cleaner air and push it all off to our east,” Davis said. “I think they are going to kind of scrub the air out a little bit. We’ll need it on the surface, too, because ash has been deposited.”
A map of current smoke conditions can be found at fire.airnow.gov. The map also displays air quality monitors, with many around the Olympia area indicating “unhealthy” or “unhealthy for sensitive group” readings as of Wednesday afternoon.
Halloween forecast
The National Weather Service only forecasts one week out, but the Climate Prediction Center forecasts an above-average chance of rain from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2. The prediction center puts Olympia at an 80-90% chance for above-average rainfall.
The CPC is also forecasting average temperatures for most of the northwest. Olympia’s average temperature on Halloween is 51 degrees.
This story was originally published October 20, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
