The National Weather Service issued Washington's first-ever Particularly Dangerous Situation alert for wildfire weather on Saturday, a designation reserved for conditions the agency considers more extreme than a standard Red Flag Warning.
Russ Lane, DNR's wildland fire division manager, said the specific danger is speed: "With extremely dry fuels on the landscape, wildfires are already growing rapidly and hard to control.
The Kaiser Canyon fire alone forced Level 3 evacuations for the town of Nespelem and roughly 1,000 residents on July 25 and has destroyed about 20 structures, per KING 5 .
This is the fourth consecutive year state climatologists have logged drought conditions somewhere in Washington, a run officials say has left forests and rangeland with less residual moisture heading into each successive summer than the year before.
The MyNorthwest.com reports crews and engines are also arriving from Florida to reinforce the Alaska and California mutual-aid units already on the ground, a multi-state response scale that DNR officials say is closer to a hurricane mobilization than a typical Northwest fire season.
The National Weather Service issued Washington's first-ever Particularly Dangerous Situation wildfire alert Saturday as 110 National Guard troops mobilize against a season already ahead of any year since 2021.