Want to get outside? Go now, before the smoke returns to the Seattle area

Winds from the Pacific began clearing the smoke out of the Puget Sound region Monday morning. Local air quality is now expected to be pretty good through Thursday midday.

But the region could be in for more bad air quality by next weekend (Aug. 25-27, 2023), when the winds might bring wildfire smoke from Canada down into the Seattle area.

“There’s a decent chance we’re going to see the winds shift around again at the end of this week and start sending some of that smoke back towards us again,” said Phil Swartzendruber, an atmospheric scientist and forecaster with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. “It’s possible it could get pretty bad again.”

Swartzendruber said this weekend’s smoke was bad enough to increase the risk of serious health events like asthma attacks, strokes and heart attacks.

As for the next several weeks, Swartzendruber said, with fires burning in eastern Washington, Canada, and elsewhere, there’s no guarantee of clean air until cooler, wetter weather arrives.

“We've actually been pretty lucky this summer that all the winds have been blowing the smoke away from us,” he said. “We could be getting a lot more smoke more regularly, and I don't see any significant rain coming in anytime soon, so we could be in this for awhile.”