The Evergreen State's watery western half has long been infamous for months of gray drizzly gloom that locals know gives way each summer to bluebird skies, mountain views and the salty breezes that caress Seattle and its neighbors perched along the shores of Puget Sound.

It's typically a boater's paradise, a camper's dream. But persistent, choking wildfire smoke has cloaked the region during the past few Augusts, drifting in from wildfires ablaze in California to the south, British Columbia to the north, and the more arid forests of eastern Washington across the Cascades. Last summer, the 66% of residents without air conditioners raced to hardware stores to jerry-rig box fans and air filters just to make breathing bearable.

Particulate respirator masks, the type that help filter out the fine matter in wildfire smoke that can harm your lungs and provoke asthma attacks, sold out as teenage soccer players, mountaineers, joggers and business professionals did what they could to adapt to the equivalent of smoking seven cigarettes in a day.

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"People around here are referring to it as a new season, the 'smoke season,'" says longtime Seattleite Kim Jones, who played fetch indoors with her border collie mix Lucy during the worst of last year's smoke. "We always felt like this was the best time of the year to be here. But if we have one or two more summers like that, we're going to start planning our vacations that time of year."

Smoke Brings Health Risk

Is this the new normal? State wildfire and air quality experts are concerned. They point to an increasing number of wildfires sparking throughout the West, many of record-setting intensity due to years of built-up brush and drier-than-usual springs and summers. They warn the unwanted annual influx of fine particulate matter could mar Washington's otherwise top-rated air quality, just one of the attributes that earned it the top spot in U.S. News' 2019 Best States ranking.

"The climate scientists tell us that wildfires are expected to increase in number and acreage in the years ahead in the intermountain West between here and the Rockies," says Andrew Wineke, communications manager for the state ecology department. "Will we see this in Seattle? We don't know. But we're certainly expecting smoke to be an increasing problem and an increasing threat to people's health."

'We're Not Going to Panic'

In 2017 and 2018, even though fires burned fewer days than in previous years, the smoke was significantly worse in Western Washington, trapped by high pressure systems off the Pacific coast. On the other side of the mountains, the northern counties of Eastern Washington endured the same smoke from seemingly all directions, as well as smoke from their own local blazes, a double whammy, Wineke says.

Already, 2019 is off to an inauspicious start. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate running on a platform dedicated to addressing climate change, this month declared a drought emergency for nearly half the state, due to a low snowpack and a forecasted dry summer. A record 254 fires have burned on state-managed forest lands since Jan. 1, with 50 sparking in March alone – a troubling, early beginning to fire season.

"That is unheard of," says Janet Pearce, wildfire spokeswoman for the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which manages more than half of Washington's 21 million acres of forests. What especially unnerves her is that nearly half of this year's fires burned on the typically damp western side of the state, where residents are often not as schooled at preventing fires on and around their property.

"We're not going to panic; we're prepared. But we are saying we're going to be fighting fire on the west side as well as the east side," Pearce says.

States Take Action

Lawmakers have taken note. In April, the state Legislature approved roughly $50 million, nearly the entire amount requested by the DNR, to help clear tinder-dry brush, grasses, dead trees and other debris from forests to reduce the types of fuel that accelerate fires beyond quick containment. Convinced that the new "normal" includes more fires and more smoke, the department is adding more full-time firefighters to focus on prevention and education during the quieter months of the year in hopes of quelling another year like 2015, when more than a million acres burned across the state from June to September.

"In 2015 we had almost every state in the country come and help us," Pearce says. "Luckily, the peak of fire season is different for almost every state."

At least for now. As weather patterns continue to shift and confound locals across the country, once-familiar seasons are becoming unrecognizable in many regions. California's fire season peak is shifting toward December as the rainy season shrinks; in Alaska, officials have moved the start of its fire season from May to April as boreal forests dry out earlier with warmer springs.

Back to the Future?

Yet smoky summers in Western Washington may be less of a new normal than a very old normal, says at least one prominent climate scientist. Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington in Seattle and author of "The Weather of the Pacific Northwest," points to news reports of Mark Twain's visit to the Pacific Northwest in 1895 that note skies so hazy with wildfire smoke that the author and humorist could not see the state's famed mountains.

"That's the way it used to be, that's the way it has been traditionally for thousands of years: it was very smoky here in the summertime," Mass says. "Fire is part of the ecosystem around here traditionally."

For generations, burns sparked by lightning or native tribes cleared the underbrush and sickly trees, enabled regrowth of wild grasses and mushrooms, and flushed out game. Fire suppression efforts launched in earnest after World War II as more Americans who took to the forests to live and play brought these fire cycles to a near halt, and with it, that regular summertime smoke.

"That's the normal, and we changed the normal," Mass says.

Prepping for Summer

As fire teams race to prevent future catastrophic blazes around the state, regional chain Bartell Drugs is stocking up on face masks for the summer months, says spokeswoman Hannah Kubiak. Outdoors groups including the Washington Trails Association and the Pacific Crest Trail Association are reminding members to ensure campfires are cool to the touch before moving on from campsites. Homeless advocates are discussing how to protect the populations who live outdoors nearly full time. And locals like Jones are making sure they have key supplies in working order.

Jones, the rare Seattleite with an A/C unit, fired it up for the first time since last summer during an unusually hot May day.