Another update for you all. As forecasted, easterly and northerly winds have died off which is good news in terms of slowing the spread of most of the fires burning in western Oregon; however, we have a few things going on which is making our “clearing out” process extremely slow. I’ll break it down for you.

1.) We are currently in a pattern very similar to the wintertime inversions we get when fog is trapped in the valley day after day. Similar, only this time it is extremely thick smoke and ash trapped at the surface.

2.) Light westerly/southwesterly winds will eventually begin “blowing,” if that’s what we want to call it, later this evening. Problem is these cooler breezes are expected to only be about 5 to 10mph tops meaning it will take a loooong time for us to clear out. For comparison the winds that drove the smoke into the valley the past three days were gusting around 20 to 30mph here in Salem, so this wind shift is helpful, but extremely weak.

3.) Yikes! Take a look at these satellite pics! Virtually all of the brown/grey you see on here is smoke, so who cares if we have an onshore breeze if there is smoke for hundreds of miles offshore. This is the result of nearly 3 days of easterly winds. I’ve never seen so much smoke so far offshore here. Just absolutely awful….

To help give some perspective on the affect this smoke is having on our weather, take a look at the area temps as of 2pm. Notice Salem sitting at 66 on a day when it should have been in the upper 90s. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the Puget Sound 15 to 20 degrees warmer than us. Very unusual….

Insane weather for sure and praying that the worse is behind us. Of course, we won’t really clear out all the way until maybe Tue or Wed of next week after we finally get some decent rainfall. More on next week’s forecast later. For now take care and stay indoors as much as possible.