Take one step outside in Snohomish County and other areas nearby and you likely see and smell a hazy smoke in the air.
The smoke is coming from wildfires burning in British Columbia.
National Weather Service meteorologist Ted Buehner spoke to our online news partner The Seattle Times to explain how the smoke is travelling so far away from the fire.
“Envision this,” Buehner told the Times. “You are in an enclosed bar with smoke and there are fans blowing at one end of the room. What’s happens? There’s no smoke at one end of the bar (with the fan), right? Now imagine that you turn off the fans and then turn on one fan at the other end of the room? What happens to the smoke?”
Well, it seeps back throughout the whole bar, he said. We, in the Seattle area, are at the end of the bar that originally had the fans blowing on our side, keeping the smoke away.
And what are the “fans” in Buehner’s analogy? The usual cooling breeze we get from the Pacific.
To read more from The Seattle Times, click here.
A burn ban has been issued in Snohomish County. For more information, click here.
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