I've been a Seattle-based full-time commercial pilot for 8 years. Last night, for the first time, I needed to fly an instrument approach to landing at Spokane due to reduced visibility by smoke. An air traffic controller told me recent smoke impacts have been the worst of his career . Earlier in the week, ground visibility in Spokane was less than 1 mile. That's a lot of particulate.

Last year we were camping in that area, and left when the area became a level 2 evacuation. The smoke was so bad then that we would have left anyway. It was so hard to breath, our eyes were stinging and it was hard to see very far. I can hardly imagine how much worse it is this year.

I hope the rain predicted for tomorrow makes its way across the mountains to where it is really needed.

I went through the big fires n central Washington three years ago, and again last year, and again this year. Health professionals, pulmonologists in particular, keep reiterating, "If you can see the air, you don't want to breathe it. Either put on an N-95 particulate mask, or stay indoors."

I drove through a forest fire on Northern California not too long ago and it sucked. Now I appreciate that the spectacle of an old van full of dudes, still hacking a coughing, swing open the van door at their destination is sorta funny, but I feel for the people trying to live regular lives in that air.

*in

@2 SeattleKim: I hope plenty of rainfall makes its way east of the Cascades, too. The devastating news of wildfires these past few years here in Washington is just plain sad. I hope the rain will put out the fires. We really need the precipitation.

That "Welcome to Omak" picture is pretty much what Spokane looked like for most of last week (except Friday, which was worse --- went from "unhealthy" to "very unhealthy" to "hazardous"). There've only been light amounts of ash here though. We came over to Seattle on Saturday: the smoke you guys had over the weekend was relatively pleasant.