September 9, 2026

Alaska holds all of this region's active alerts today, and the coastal west is where they are.

The National Weather Service office in Fairbanks has high wind warnings in effect through Friday afternoon for Shishmaref, the Bering Strait coast, and St. Lawrence Island, along with high surf advisories for the Yukon Delta coast running through Friday evening. The Juneau office has wind advisories for the Municipality of Skagway, and the Anchorage office has hydrologic outlooks for the interior Kuskokwim Delta.

A high wind warning means damaging winds are expected rather than possible. The Weather Service instruction is to secure loose objects that could be blown around or damaged. For coastal western Alaska in September that means fuel drums, boats, drying racks, plywood, and anything on a roof. Autumn storms in the Bering Sea are the ones that push water onto low coastal ground, and the surf advisory alongside the wind warning is the part to watch if you are in a low lying village.

Idaho, Oregon, and Washington have no active watches, warnings, or advisories of any kind today. After a long fire summer, that is a meaningful sentence.

On the seismic side, the U.S. Geological Survey's earthquake catalogue records a significant Aleutian sequence within the past week centered southwest of Nikolski, on Umnak Island. The largest was a magnitude 6.3 on September 3, followed by roughly fifteen further events of magnitude 4.5 or greater over September 3 and 4, most of them between 78 and 104 kilometres from Nikolski. A separate magnitude 5.3 occurred off the coast of Oregon on September 4, and a magnitude 5.0 east southeast of Attu Station on September 2.

No tsunami warning, advisory, or watch is in effect for any U.S. coastline. The Aleutian sequence is in a part of the chain that is very sparsely populated, and its practical meaning for most households in this region is a reminder rather than an event. The Cascadia and Alaska subduction zones are the reason a household in this region keeps water, shoes under the bed, and a way to shut off gas. That preparation is worth the same amount today as it was last week.

The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates wildfire response across federal and state agencies, reported 64 uncontained large fires nationally in its September 8 situation report, with the national preparedness level at 4 on a 5 point scale. Year to date the country has recorded 53,665 fires and about 8.4 million acres burned, which the center puts at 125 percent of the ten year average for fire counts and 157 percent for acreage.

Twenty three of those uncontained fires are in the Northwest geographic area, more than any other area in the country, and the acreage totals are the largest anywhere.

In Oregon, the Big Grass fire stands at 578,637 acres and 94 percent contained, the Rowe Creek Complex at 373,927 acres and 99 percent, Grasshopper at 93,990 acres and 93 percent, Hagen at 61,379 acres and 60 percent, Wrights Spring at 55,134 acres and 98 percent, McCully at 13,533 acres and 59 percent, Austin at 12,610 acres and 22 percent, Paradise at 9,646 acres and 28 percent, and The Narrows at 302 acres and 27 percent. McCully, Austin, and The Narrows have evacuations in place.

In Washington, Little Giant is at 171,458 acres and 81 percent contained, Sinlahekin at 166,084 acres and 67 percent, Ptarmigan at 25,166 acres and 73 percent, Three Queens at 9,444 acres and 12 percent, Border 2 at 8,043 acres and 73 percent, Luna at 7,722 acres and 34 percent, King at 3,146 acres and not yet contained, High Lava at 2,899 acres and 63 percent, Sisi at 2,712 acres and 11 percent, Thunder Creek at 950 acres and not yet contained, Goat at 809 acres and 3 percent, Electric at 622 acres and 24 percent, and the Wonderland Complex at 387 acres and 11 percent. Three Queens and Goat have evacuations in place.

The pattern in those numbers is the useful part. The very large fires are nearly wrapped at 93 to 99 percent, and the fires with evacuations are the small and mid sized ones at low containment. Season totals look alarming; the live edge is much smaller than the acreage suggests. If you are near one of the low containment fires, evacuation status comes from your county sheriff or emergency management office rather than from acreage.

Washington has an open Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency declaration, EM-3650, issued August 3 for fire, and Oregon has three Fire Management Assistance Grants from August. All of these reimburse government firefighting costs rather than paying households.

No power outage events or water system notices are reported across the four states.

No air quality alerts are active in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington today.

The most recent first hand account we could read is the Washington Department of Ecology smoke blog for September 4, which reported that rain had reached southwest Washington, the Olympics, and the Blue Mountains and that hourly readings had been mostly good to moderate since September 2, after weeks of poor air in Cascade communities. The same post cautioned that areas which missed the rain could return to fire supporting conditions by mid week, which is now.

We were not able to obtain air quality readings current to today. The AirNow site's data panels did not load, and the state smoke blogs have not posted since September 4 in Washington and August 31 in Oregon. If you are downwind of an active fire, check airnow.gov directly rather than relying on this brief for today's numbers, and check it rather than the sky, because fine particulate levels do not track well with visible haze.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Alert Network archive index could not be read again this morning, so we are not able to confirm either way whether a new national health advisory has posted. The most recent notice we could open directly was issued August 11 and is written for clinicians rather than households. If you want to check for yourself, the archive lives at emergency.cdc.gov/han.

The Storm Prediction Center's day 2 fire weather outlook puts elevated fire weather conditions across eastern Idaho Thursday, alongside southern Montana and Wyoming. Nothing is drawn for Oregon or Washington. After the September 2 rain, the question for the interior Northwest is whether this warm, dry mid week stretch is enough to bring fuels back. Watch for red flag warnings appearing on your local Weather Service office page over the next two days.

The seasonal turn here usually arrives in the second half of September, when the first sustained rain reaches the west side and fire season effectively ends. That has already started in southwest Washington and has not reached the east side.

This is also the point in the year when the Northwest's other two hazards move back onto the list. Atmospheric river season begins in November, and the household preparation for it is the same as for an earthquake in most respects: water, food that needs no cooking, light, warmth, and a way to get information when the power is out.

One item worth naming before outage season. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's guidance on portable generators is to run them outdoors only, at least 20 feet from homes and buildings, with exhaust directed away from windows, doors, and vents. Install working carbon monoxide alarms on every level of the home and outside sleeping areas and test them monthly. If an alarm sounds, get outside first, then call 911. Every year the first big outage catches households that bought a generator and never thought about where it would sit.