Wind Waves Goodbye To Summer

A strong wind surging across the mostly bare plains of Eastern Washington on Thursday brought fire danger, cooler temperatures, dust-darkened sky and a reminder that summer officially and now emphatically is over.

The winds of the surging cool front grabbed the fine topsoil from recently harvested and bare Columbia Basin and Palouse fields and swirled it up, carrying eye-stinging dust across Spokane and Whitman counties.

The wind apparently caused little direct damage in the greater Spokane area, according to police and fire officials, but whipped up fires in the tinder-dry wildlands around the area.

The dust storm should be no surprise, according to a Washington State University crop and soils sciences professor, especially due to the unusual late-summer drought persistent throughout Eastern Washington. “We have soils that arrived here on the wind,” Busacca explained. “It shouldn’t surprise us too much that soils are susceptible to wind erosion when not covered by plants.”

The tiny particles can swirl for hundreds of miles. A dust storm in China last spring browned Inland Northwest skies for days. This duster was even worse farther east, especially in the Coeur d’Alene area where skies darkened significantly at midafternoon.

The weather was expected to change late Thursday, however, with decreasing wind by nightfall bringing dust levels down and benefitting firefighters.

Forecasters are calling for higher humidity and cooler temperatures today with highs falling into the 60s, more seasonable than the recent unusually warm late summer stretch.

Meteorologists expected gusts as high as 40 mph when the National Weather Service issued a special bulletin mid-afternoon Thursday. Weather forecasters warned of blowing dust, along with a “very dangerous fire situation.”

Officials with the Coeur d’Alene Interagency Dispatch Center, which sends firefighters to battle blazes, said recent warm temperatures and lack of rain made grass and brush ripe for burning.