While it barely rained, Spokane enjoyed a smoke-free August and drought conditions didn't worsen in central Washington.
SPOKANE, Wash. — As we close the books on August 2020, the month had an interesting quirk weather-wise. While the entire area ended up with barely any rain, the drought nor air quality worsened.
While August is traditionally one of the driest months of the year, this year has been drier than dry! In Spokane, we ended up with a grand total of two-hundredths of an inch. That came on August 6, which another three days offering up a trace of rainfall (meaning it's rained but didn't measure anything at all).
Central Washington did even worse. Omak got no measurable rain with only a trace falling on two days this past month. And Wenatchee only had a trace of rain fall on five different days, but again, exactly zero-point-zero of measurable rainfall.
Despite lots of areas in central and eastern Washington seeing little to no rain, the drought never worsened this summer. In fact, since the start of July, the drought monitor has not changed at all, with severe drought conditions still being reported along the eastern Cascade slopes.
What stands out in August is how non-smoky it was. I covered this last week in my Weather Classroom segment, how August 2020 (and all of 2020 for that matter) has not seen a single day with poor air quality or wildfire induced hazy skies.
Recently, a dry and drought filled summer has led to multiple wildfires and stagnate air that causes Augusts in Spokane to be the smoky summer month. But that just wasn't the case as people in eastern Washington enjoyed a smoke-free August 2020. The only haze and smoke issued we saw in the Inland Northwest was one hazy morning in Lewiston.
Other parts of the western U.S. haven't been so lucky. The numerous wildfires burning in California, coupled with the persistent weather pattern, caused day-after-day of smoky skies to the point where it was almost so overcast that you couldn't see the sun during the day.
Now as we're into September, the risk for wildfires, hazy skies, and poor air quality will go down. But like what we're noticing today, on the first day of September, as long as the dry summer weather pattern is ongoing, there will still be that potential for conditions to worsen, and we won't be letting our collective guards down just yet.
September 02, 2020 at 06:11AM
https://www.krem.com/article/weather/august-recap-extremely-dry-in-spokane-but-thankfully-not-smoky/293-13db2dfb-a4e1-41dd-a458-a7aef059524e
August recap: Extremely dry in Spokane, but thankfully not smoky - KREM.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=dry&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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