After choking down smoke and watching large swaths of forest burn the past two summers, much of Washington state braced for the 2019 wildfire season with N95 masks in hand and air purifiers waiting to kick in. But now it’s late August, when fire activity usually peaks, and we’re still waiting for the Big Fire.
Outside of a few large fires east of the Cascades, the blazes have been small and not as widespread compared with recent years. Meanwhile, the Northwest so far has escaped the worst impacts of long-distance smoke from places like Alaska and Siberia.
“Early in the season we were predicting pretty heavily above-average potential for large fires and above-average activity for most of the state,” says meteorologist Josh Clark of the Washington state Department of Natural Resources, “and we really haven't seen that manifest this year.”
Northwest Interagency Coordination Center fire analyst Timothy Klukas echoed Clark’s assessment.