Summer keeps it hot and smoky

MOSES LAKE — Summer, you’ve made your point. Late July, early August, it can get hot, blast-furnace hot in fact. It’s summer, forest and range fires happen, it gets smoky.

Summer hot, summer smoky, yes, Grant County residents get it. So maybe summer can dial back now, a little cooler weather, a little less smoke. Or maybe no smoke.

Nope.

At least not most of this week – the forecast is for “temperatures in the 90s to triple digits,” said Mark Turner of the National Weather Service office in Spokane. For Moses Lake the NWS is projecting a high of 102 degrees for Tuesday, with temperatures dropping all the way down to 99 degrees by Thursday.

And it’ll stay smoky. It’s “just a stagnant weather pattern,” Turner said, combined with big forest and brush fires. Smoke doesn't exactly stay in one place, he said, but there's a lot of it around right now.

Fires have been raging in British Columbia for weeks – more than 120 at last count. While Washington is largely fire-free, there’s a 55,000-acre fire in Okanogan County close to the Canadian border. The upshot of all that is smoke, lots of it, so much that the Washington Department of Ecology issued an air quality alert Friday.

Air quality was declared “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” The Washington Department of Health website said “sensitive groups” include people with chronic lung diseases, like asthma or bronchitis, or respiratory infections, like colds or flu. The smoke also can affect people with diabetes, heart or circulatory conditions or who have had heart attacks. Babies and people older than age 64 are also at risk.

People should avoid outdoor activity on smoky days. Windows and doors should be closed, and the air conditioner should be set to recirculate the air already indoors. Some room air cleaners can help reduce indoor air pollution with the proper filters. They should be in the rooms where people spend most of their time.

All this hot smoky weather can be traced to a very strong ridge of high pressure sitting over the western United States. It’s “definitely entrenched,” Turner said. And it’s not breaking down.

Turner compared the air masses aloft to bumper cars. “We’re right now in the big heavy bumper car and we need another big heavy bumper car to move us out of the way.”

There is one bright spot. “It’s hazy and hot. Not humid, though,” Turner said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.