Yeah... 2015 was virtually smoke free here. 2017 and 2018 were much worse in terms of smoke.

I get what Front Ranger is saying, some things in weather are "easy correlations", like, "that makes sense!" but in actuality the correlation is like 0.01-2.

Highlight of 2025-26 20260309_174311.mp4

Wasn't anywhere near the smokiest or that impactful to the West side of the Cascades compared to other years, though. More of an east of the Cascades fire year. No doubt the extremely dry late spring through summer didn't help. In terms of the Cascades (I believe the snowpack we're discussing), 2020 ended up as the worst fire season on record - and that was primarily due to the Labor Day fires. Tough to argue that had anything related to snowpack the previous spring, which was actually pretty healthy. 2017 and 2018 were both very smoky summers with a lot of local Cascade fires...2017 had an above average spring snowpack and 2018 was quite decent as well.

That's some pretty high cape in Missouri. I assume my storms tomorrow night will be noisy.