Wildfire smoke may be coming back to Puget Sound

Lots of people in the Puget Sound region are breathing a sigh of relief this morning.

Air quality is good to moderate after days of wildfire smoke that blanketed the area.

But it may not last long.

"Most of that smoke right now is going into Eastern Washington,” Ni Cushmeer of the National Weather Service said Friday morning. “The westerly component of the wind is keeping that thicker smoke east of us for now."

Notice the use of the words “for now.” Cushmeer said that thicker smoke from British Columbia wildfires may come back to Seattle as early as Sunday night.

For now, enjoy the cooler, cleaner air.

At dawn Friday, air quality in Seattle was moderate. It was even better to the south, in cities like Kent, Auburn and Tacoma.

Port Angeles was an outlier: Its air was rated unhealthy for sensitive groups on the 5 a.m. reading from the EPA site AirNow.gov. And Washington state's monitoring network, which uses a more stringent scale, rated Port Angeles' air as "unhealthy," period.

Even east of the Cascades, where some major fires are burning, many cities were seeing the best air quality they’ve had in many days.