Good news: (1) Highway 20 is open again; along Early Winters Creek, expect slow downs, restrictions, and fire fighters. (2) the Delancy fire appears out. (3) the Cedar Creek fire is over 50% contained while the Cub Creek 2 fire is 65% contained (black line around current fire boundary indicates contained; red not). The Mazama Store is open again.
Ok news: the recent weather has clearly helped although the cloudy days had stronger winds.
Bad news: (1) still a long way to a real rain or snow. Only then will the fires be out for sure. (2) the right weather (heat, humidity, and wind) conditions could cause significant problems in the next two months. (3) There are still many opportunities for old fires to start up and new fires to begin (the newest fire is the Twentyfive mile fire on Lake Chelan). (4) Some 550,000 acres have burned so far and most of the those acres are on the eastside of the Cascades. (5) There had been almost a month of bad to terrible air quality in many areas on the eastside. (6) There have been many Level 3 evacuations called some without any or minimal warning (e.g., the Twentyfive Mile, Muckamuck, and Walker Lake/Spur fires.
Associated with these fires and these extraordinary drought conditions, there have been lots of forest closures (DNR lands are still closed).
There many agency web sites that provide very detailed and up-to-date information. Inciweb is just one example.
Those of us on the westside of the Cascades have had our share of dry weather, heat, smoke, and some small fires; however, those on the eastside have endured much more. Whether we attribute some of this or all this to climate change, the impacts are not uniformly distributed and felt (whether one lives in an air conditioned house or not, whether one is on the eastside or westside of the Cascades, for example).
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