In 2026, wildfires burned more than 900,000 acres in Washington state, and more than 2.5 million acres in Oregon, shattering that state’s record.
As fires filled the Walla Walla Valley with smoke that inflamed lungs and cancelled events, a retired Whitman professor took to social media to interpret what was happening and why.
Kevin Pogue is the man behind the Walla Walla Valley Earth Science Facebook page. He specializes in geology and terroir, but he also taught meteorology. Online he helps his roughly 2,700 followers make sense of the atmospheric patterns and anomalies that might stir their curiosity and shape their plans.
In a home office, where biographies of Daniel Boone share shelf space with volumes on wine and champagne, Pogue pulled up websites like Netweather and NASA Worldview, and a site he considers a classic — one he believes every Walla Wallan should consult — the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Pendleton.
“I don’t see myself as everybody’s daily weatherman,” he said. “I see myself as the guy that might explain why something weird’s happening today.”
And the past fire season — one of the Northwest’s most destructive on record — gave him much to explain.
Case in point: late July, when the regional air quality index reached unhealthy levels.
Smoke that drifted through the valley came from local fires, such as the Hagen Fire near Tollgate, Oregon, that burned more than 61,000 acres, and the Paradise Fire, which burned more than 9,600 acres on the Washington-Oregon border.
But that was only part of the story.
The Walla Walla Valley — a bowl within the larger bowl of the Columbia Basin, Pogue said — also got smoke from several wildfires in Central Oregon. Fires had erupted all over Oregon, and in the North Cascades along the Canadian border.
Weeks later, Pogue would write that Walla Walla was “directly downwind of the Grasshopper fire that’s torching the east slopes of Mt. Hood.” That fire grew to almost 94,000 acres.
‘Destruction on the landscape’
Drought conditions — low snowpack, a hot spring and dry vegetation — presaged a harrowing fire season. The fire fuels were in place.
Then came what Jon Bonk, a meteorologist with the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, called a “one-two punch”: A series of lightning storms in July that ignited fires across the two states, followed by wind that fed and spread the fires.
Aug. 1 brought what Bonk called a “capstone wind event”: a red-flag warning that, for the first time in Washington and Oregon's history, the National Weather Service described as a “particularly dangerous situation,” the New York Times reported.
That was also the day a man in the Spokane area allegedly set a fire that damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures, including homes. He allegedly told investigators he’d chosen that day to light the blaze to maximize damage. Two other major fires nearby that day also caused significant loss.
In Spokane, firefighter Ryan Rodruck learned a new term during those fires he hopes never to hear again: urban conflagration.
“The way that that fire moved, and the level of destruction on the landscape, was something I had not seen before in my career,” said Rodruck, the wildfire communications manager for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
He also saw success stories: “Sixty-five thousand people in the Spokane area evacuated in about an hour, with no injuries or fatalities,” he recalled. The structures saved by firefighters numbered in the thousands, too, according to officials.
At higher elevations, fire season is done, Rodruck said. Snow is beginning to appear in the mountains. Oregon’s fire season has also been declared over.
But, in Washington, though the statewide burn ban has expired, only when there’s a big precipitation event will fire season finally end, Rodruck said.
On Tuesday, Nov. 3, Professor Pogue, citing the National Weather Service, told his Facebook followers: “FYI - looks like the November spigot gets turned on late next week, with the first big AR” — atmospheric river — “event of the season.”
