00:00In the forecast feed, we're going to migrate west and northwest just for a bit to talk
00:05about the fire danger and this heat dome that is leading to near record highs for some.
00:11First off, the fire season in the northwest has been pretty terrible here in Washington
00:15and Oregon.
00:16This is the time of the year when the northwest faces its worst fire conditions, mid to borderline
00:22mid to late summer here.
00:23And we've had two million acres burnt in Oregon and that is the worst year in the modern
00:30era for wildfire acreage burnt in Oregon and you have to go all the way back to like the
00:341930s to a time when some very bad years rivaled some of those statistics.
00:40That was a different era before modern firefighting equipment.
00:43But as we take a look at the current situation here with smoke, this is just kind of a very
00:48short term look at and even just a recent look at smoke from earlier today as well.
00:54But again, the deep black and maroon is where we have concentrated areas of very, very thick
01:01smoke.
01:01And obviously, some of the fire activity in many of these areas on the east side of
01:07the Cascades has just been absolutely terrible, even not that far from the Portland Metro and
01:12north of Spokane, a lot of very thick smoke.
01:14So in the short term, we're looking at very smoky skies here with a general flow around
01:19the heat dome across the west, driving very smoky skies all the way down into parts of
01:25Utah.
01:26There are some fires kind of festering down here in parts of Utah as well.
01:30But again, just kind of a general circulation around the heat dome.
01:35As we get into the latter part of the week, the fire activity will continue in the interior
01:40northwest.
01:41And we're going to see a little bit more of a push into more of eastern Montana for
01:44some of that fire activity.
01:45So I'm going to spend some time here in the computer modeling.
01:48But overall, big picture, this is our forecast here for fire activity through the 10th of
01:53August.
01:53That'll take us into Monday of next week.
01:55So right through the weekend, very high fire activity likely in the interior northwest,
01:59or at least very high fire risk.
02:00And the fires are well established out this way.
02:03Let's take a look at what's going on out there.
02:05Here.
02:05This map here shows soil moisture.
02:08And man, we've seen a lot of soil moisture in the east and northeast.
02:13And you can see this is a model product from the GFS that actually does respond to even
02:19short term rainfall.
02:20For example, into Wednesday, look at the impact of some Tuesday night and Wednesday morning
02:26downpours and thunderstorms into eastern Iowa.
02:29It paints some fresh soil moisture there, Chicago, Rockford, you can see how this responds.
02:34And there's just no movement.
02:35It's basically in the white and the very, very light tan into early next week across the
02:41northwest.
02:42And when we look at the key here, we're looking at soil moisture percentage by volume.
02:47And I chose the very top layer, just very surface, so you can go much deeper with this.
02:52But at the surface, 0 to 10 centimeters, we're looking at a very narrow zone here.
02:57This is what the shovel just begins to hit as you dig down.
03:00And we're down here, very, very, very limited soil moisture.
03:04So overall, here's the heat dome.
03:07I'm going to plot this here, big ridge of high pressure centered over the interior southwest.
03:11There will be a time around Friday when Vegas makes a run to near record highs in that area.
03:18And as we move forward, let's take a look out at how the heat dome and the center of upper
03:23level high pressure migrates.
03:25It expands a bit into the weekend, still centered over the interior southwest.
03:31And it's really the northern periphery of that where we find ourselves here with the
03:34most volatile fire activity.
03:36And that's not a coincidence.
03:38There are some stronger winds aloft.
03:40If you're under the core of a heat dome, there's not much wind out there.
03:45And if you're on the fringe of it, at least aloft, here we have this broad flow in the atmosphere.
03:52And if you get gusts of wind to mix any of that down from upstairs, you're going to get
03:56some strong winds at the ground.
03:58And that is one of the key ingredients for fire behavior.
04:02This is a map that would show precipitation.
04:04A little gray hints of precip up into Canada at times on the map here.
04:09A little green up there near the Canadian Rockies and east of there.
04:12But you'll notice there's not a drop of precipitation in the northwest here until we get into maybe
04:17late next week when there's a hint of perhaps a little convection over the northern Cascades.
04:21But most areas experiencing fire will not see a drop of rain through the next 10 days.
04:28And this is the dry season up this way.
04:30When it comes to wind gusts, how are we doing?
04:32And you can see the winds, they're not terribly strong.
04:36But they're strong enough because we have established fires with very low humidity.
04:40I'll show you the humidity, the dew points, the moisture content in the atmosphere in just
04:44a moment.
04:44But it is really, really dry out there.
04:47And even any breeze, in this case, we're looking at 10 meter, about 30 feet, 32 feet
04:52up into the sky, basically rooftop level winds in knots.
04:57So it would be 1.15 mile per hour per knot.
05:04So if you've got a 17 knot wind, maybe it's an 18 or 19 mile per hour wind.
05:08It's close to miles per hour when you're getting down to numbers this small.
05:11In the green blobs, you're getting into the 20 to 30 knot range, maybe 22 to 34 mile
05:16per hour range.
05:17And that's what we're facing in some of these areas, some of the canyons near the City of
05:21the Dalles there, squeaking through the canyon gorge there for the Columbia River.
05:25Potential for some gusts over 30 knots, 35 to 40 miles per hour.
05:30And these are dangerous winds, even though they're not that strong, it's not going to
05:33be damaging wind.
05:34But it's enough.
05:34You can see the lee side, the east side of the Cascades, downsloping.
05:37It's a drying wind.
05:38And I saw a 35 knot there.
05:41And that would be like 38 to mile per hour winds gusting on the lee side of the mountains.
05:47And continuing into next week as well.
05:49Is there much moisture?
05:50Absolutely not.
05:51This is the dew point map.
05:52It's a measure of moisture in the atmosphere.
05:55Very, very, very little moisture in the atmosphere.
05:58When you get into, there are two blues on the scale.
06:01One blue is like tropical air.
06:02Unfortunately, the blue that we're looking at is a dew point of like five degrees Fahrenheit.
06:07Really, really dry air.
06:08This is Wednesday at midday.
06:10And you get into that maybe grayish shade here.
06:13You're still down with dew points of 25 or so.
06:16This is very dry air.
06:17It's the likes of which we don't see in the northeast unless it's basically the wintertime.
06:21That dry.
06:22And we're going to continue to hold on to this dry weather for some time.
06:26So there's no real end in sight for this.
06:28That's the big message here for you.
06:31And I'm just going to close with a look at the heat dome.
06:33There will be some record challenging highs that we continue to face here.
06:37Over the mid to latter part of the week.
06:39Scattered across some parts of the Pacific time zone and especially into the mountain
06:42time zone for the core of the heat.
06:44Not a whole lot of records, but some record challenging highs.
06:47So that's your forecast feed.
06:49Good.
06:50Good.
06:50Good.
06:51You're.
06:51Good.
06:51Good.
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