Texas has its floods, Florida has a potentially catastrophic hurricane coming its way, but the Pacific Northwest has its own sign of the apocalypse: wildfires that are turning the sun into a smoke-obscured blood orange and peppering the streets with ash.
“I have been forecasting around here for a long time and have never seen a situation like this,” Cliff Mass, a University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences, wrote on his blog this morning.
KCPQ meteorologist Rebecca Stevenson suggested that Seattleites should sweep up the ash and put it in baggies “to save and mark the incredibly hot/dry summer of 2017.”
Weather conditions have been conducive to wildfires all summer long, even in the stereotypically rainy Northwest. Western Washington suffered through smoky skies last month, due primarily to fires in British Columbia, but this week is shaping up as even worse.
