Storms Off OR Coast Could Clear Air, But Will Strengthen Winds Throughout This Week
SAN FRANCISCO Across a hellish landscape of smoke and ash, authorities in Oregon, California and Washington State battled to contain mega-wildfires on Sunday as shifting winds threatened to accelerate blazes that have burned an unimaginable swath of land across the West.
The arrival of the stronger winds on Sunday tested the resolve of fire crews already exhausted by weeks of combating blazes that have consumed around 5 million acres of desiccated forests, incinerated numerous communities and created what in many places was measured as the worst air quality on the planet. Theres just so much fire, said Ryan Walbrun, a fire weather meteorologist with the National Weather Service. And so much smoke.
EDIT
Mr. Walbrun of the National Weather Service said that winds generated from a slow-moving storm system off the coast of Oregon were expected to last most of the week and to blow at 15 to 30 miles an hour. The winds could have the beneficial effect of clearing some of the toxic smoke haze hovering in the atmosphere from Los Angeles to Seattle. But for firefighters, the shift in winds represents a 180-degree change in direction in many areas, threatening their progress in containing the fires.
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning because of the prospect of windy and dry weather in southern Oregon and nearby counties in California. In California, which has experienced catastrophic fires every year since the wine country north of San Francisco was devastated in 2017, the fires are encroaching on many of the same areas previously burned, adding new trauma. The town of Paradise, where more than 80 people died in a 2018 firestorm and most structures were destroyed, is on the edge of one of the largest fires now raging in the state.
EDIT
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/us/Wildfires-Oregon-California-Washington.html