Mt Hood · Aug 28-30 · 9 days out Updated Wed Aug 19, 5:00 AM · refreshes daily at 5am

Everything is fine.

8 in 10chance the weekend is fine - clear or lightly hazy

The biggest fire near the house sits behind Mt Hood, and the wind patterns forecast for that weekend blow its smoke away from you rather than toward you. What you should actually plan on is a valley that smells like a campfire at breakfast and clears through the afternoon — annoying, not trip-ending.

The realistic bad case is a single day in the unhealthy-for-sensitive-groups range, driven not by Mt Hood but by two uncontained fires about fifteen miles due south of the house, on your side of the mountains.

Known now4 of 5 forecast sources already cover your dates
Next updateAug 22 — Air-quality / smoke model
No horizonFire size and containment are observations, not forecasts — they can move this on any day
Decide byAug 25
What would change this
  • Evacuation zone at the housenone
  • US-26 open, Portland to Welchesopen
  • Air at Multorpor52 · Hazy
  • Nearest fire outside 10 miles12.5 mi · Mitchell
  • Wind pushing smoke our wayno - at 0 mph

So what are the odds?

If we ran this weekend 100 times, here is how they would split. Hover a row to pick it out of the dots.

3 in 1027%Clear weekend AQI 0-50
Mt Hood sharp against blue sky all three days, no smell, kids outside from morning on.
nothing
5 in 1049%Hazy but fine AQI 50-100
Milky-white sky, faint campfire smell at 7am that burns off by 11, the mountain visible but soft-edged, ridgelines a few miles off look flat and gray. Nobody's eyes water; one asthmatic in the group notices.
Nothing structural — sleep with windows shut, do the long hike in the afternoon rather than at dawn.
1 in 1015%One smoky day AQI 100-150
One morning the far side of the valley is a silhouette, sun is orange at 10am, air stings slightly in the throat. Other two days are merely hazy.
Swap that day's outdoor plan for indoors — run a HEPA purifier in the main room, wear N95s for the drive/errands, keep the kids and anyone with asthma inside until evening.
1 in 109%Real smoke episode AQI 150+
Ash flecks on the car, visibility under a mile, smoke smell indoors even with windows shut, headaches by afternoon, everyone's phone showing purple.
Leave early or relocate west toward the coast; check Clackamas County evacuation levels and Watch Duty before driving anywhere on US-26.
Clear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendClear weekendHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineHazy but fineOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayOne smoky dayReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episodeReal smoke episode
Clear AQI 0-50
You can see the mountain. Nobody notices anything.
Hazy AQI 50-100
Visible haze, ridgelines soften, faint campfire smell.
Smoky AQI 100-150
Distinctly smoky, orange sun, eyes sting a little.
Bad AQI over 150
Mountain invisible. You smell it indoors.

Where the fires are

Fires near the house, drawn at their real shape from the federal perimeter data, over USGS terrain. Dashed rings are distance from the house; the shaded wedge is the only direction an east wind could carry smoke here from. Point at a fire for its details.

SandyBrightwoodWelchesGovernment Campan east wind would carry smoke from here10 mi20 miThe houseGrasshopper92,399 acres · 17.4 miAustin3,244 acres · 19.0 miThe Narrows14.0 miMitchell12.5 miAustin Non-Stat20.4 mifire perimetersmall fire, size knownlocated, size not reported10 milesEverything within 60 milesGrasshopperBenchTen MileAustinBeachcombHigh LavaThe NarrowsMitchellAustin Non-Stat0579 Ten Mile
SandyBrightwoodWelchesGovernment Campan east wind would carry smoke from here20 mi40 miThe houseGrasshopper92,399 acres · 17.4 miBench67,071 acres · 45.5 miAustin3,244 acres · 19.0 miBeachcomb2,346 acres · 49.5 miThe Narrows14.0 miMitchell12.5 miAustin Non-Stat20.4 mifire perimetersmall fire, size knownlocated, size not reported10 miles

Solid dots are fires too small to draw at this scale but whose size is known. A dashed circle would mean a fire that has been located but has no published perimeter - size unknown, not small.

Beyond this frame, and too far to threaten the house but close enough to add regional haze: Bench (67,071 acres, 45.5 mi SSE), Ten Mile (4,834 acres, 56.7 mi SE), Beachcomb (2,346 acres, 49.5 mi SSE), High Lava (1,405 acres, 37.8 mi N).

An outline is only as current as the last mapping flight, which is not the same as when this page refreshed. Outlines flown — Grasshopper Aug 18 · Austin Aug 18 · The Narrows Aug 18 · Mitchell Aug 16. The oldest is Mitchell, 2 days behind. Acreage and containment are refreshed far more often than the outlines are re-flown — those figures were last updated Aug 19, 3:51 AM, so a fire may already be larger than the shape drawn for it.

Terrain: USGS 3DEP (public domain). Roads and water: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Fire perimeters: NIFC.

Want to check it yourself, or see the rest of the state? The Oregonian's wildfire tracker is live and updates every 15 minutes.

Day by day

Fri Aug 28
Clear
likely 46 - could reach 104
10% chance of a smoky day
Sat Aug 29
Clear
likely 49 - could reach 115
14% chance of a smoky day
Sun Aug 30
Hazy
likely 52 - could reach 125
16% chance of a smoky day

The specific odds

All three days clear25%
At least one smoky day (100+)22%
Two or more smoky days11%
At least one bad day (150+)8%
US-26 closed during the trip2%
Evacuation level at Welches7%

The one thing that would bring smoke here

10%of 156 ensemble member-days show the east wind that would bring smoke
vs 31% in a normal year — 21 points below normal
By trip day 08/28: 4% · 08/29: 12% · 08/30: 15%
By model gem global 21 members → 16% · gfs05 31 members → 6%
Base rate by year 2025: 22% · 2024: 44% · 2023: 44% · 2022: 22% · 2021: 22% (45 days, trip dates +/-3 days)

The long-range ensembles show less east-wind risk than a normal year — weak evidence, but pointing the right way.

Caveat: this counts days whose dominant wind is easterly, which at a valley site also picks up ordinary overnight down-valley drainage, not only the Gorge-outflow events that actually carry smoke. Forecast and base rate are measured the same way, so the gap is the meaningful part; the absolute percentages are not a chance-of-smoke.

When we'll actually know more

It is not one cut-off. Five sources arrive on five different dates, and the darker the strip, the more of them cover your weekend. Hover any day for the count.

Wed Aug 19Thu Aug 20Fri Aug 21Sat Aug 22Sun Aug 23Mon Aug 24Tue Aug 25Wed Aug 26Thu Aug 27Fri Aug 28Sat Aug 29Sun Aug 30Fire size & containmentAir-quality / smoke modelAug 19 - todayAug 30 - trip ends
Hover a dayto see the forecast we logged that morning and how much was known.

▲ Since 2026-08-10 the forecast has moved worse (+17 on the likely worst day) across 10 daily updates. Shading above shows source coverage, not this movement - hover a past day to see what we said that morning.

nowFire size & containment
how big the fires are and whether they are being held
nowLong-range ensembles (GEFS 0.5 + GEM)
wind direction, 52 members · reaches 32 days out
nowECMWF ensemble (51 members)
wind direction, the sharpest ensemble · reaches 13 days out
nowDeterministic weather (16-day)
day-by-day wind and temperature · reaches 15 days out
Aug 22Air-quality / smoke model (CAMS)
actual AQI at the house · reaches 6 days out

Why we think this

The instinct here is to worry about Grasshopper — 92,399 acres, 17 miles east — but Mt Hood and the Cascade crest sit between it and the house, and getting its smoke to Welches requires sustained easterly downslope flow; the ensembles put that at 10% of member-days versus a 31% climatological rate for this window, a 21-point negative departure that is real evidence against exactly the mechanism the bad case needs. The fires that can actually reach this house without any wind reversal are the ones people overlook: Mitchell (12.5 mi S), The Narrows (14 mi SSW, 0% contained), and Austin (19 mi S, 0% contained) are at essentially the same longitude as the house, west of the crest, in the drainage that feeds north toward the Sandy/Zigzag corridor — no terrain shielding at all. Under the prevailing onshore westerly pattern their smoke is flushed east and the house stays clean-to-hazy, which is why the modal outcome is 50-100; the failure mode is a southerly ahead of a front or a stagnant ridge, combined with normal overnight valley drainage that pools smoke at the house between 2am and 10am and drags the 24-hour average up even when afternoons look fine. The nearby monitor already reads 52 today with no east wind, which is a fair picture of the current steady state, so a worst-day median of 57 is close to 'today, repeated' rather than a forecast of deterioration.

A normal late August here is Clear - median AQI 19 across the last 4 years. On these exact dates: 2025: 25 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 17.

We are forecasting a worst day of 59, 40 points above that base rate. That departure rests entirely on the reasoning above; judge it for yourself.

What the bad version needs:
The Narrows (160 ac, 0% contained, 14 mi SSW) and Austin (3,244 ac, 0% contained, 19 mi S) keep growing through the last week of August — fuels are fully cured, the state is at PL 5, and initial attack is resource-starved, so 0%-contained fires this size routinely triple or better in nine days. → A pre-frontal southerly or a stagnant light-wind ridge sets up over August 28-30 instead of the marine push. These fires are on the SAME side of the Cascade crest as the house — Mt Hood shields nothing here — so smoke tracks straight north up the Salmon/Sandy/Zigzag corridor. → Overnight the valley drains and pools that smoke at the house between roughly 2am and 10am; even with clean afternoons, the 24-hour average lands above 100.
First visible signal: Acreage on Austin or The Narrows jumping on the Watch Duty app (or InciWeb) — Austin past ~10,000 acres is the tell — followed by the Multorpor/Government Camp monitor on the AirNow app showing overnight hourly readings above 80-100 that don't fully clear by midday. - about 3 days ahead
Key drivers, and what would change our minds
  • Ensemble east-wind fraction 10% vs 31% climatology (-21 pts) — argues against the Grasshopper/downslope path the worst case depends on
  • Three uncontained fires 12-19 miles due S/SSW on the SAME side of the crest as the house — no terrain shielding, and the real bad path
  • Measured season anomaly of 1.86x in local AQI at this location
  • Nearby monitor at 52 (Moderate) today under benign winds — the current floor
  • Grasshopper at 57% and Bench at 90% containment, both on the normal late-August improving trajectory, and both east of the crest anyway
  • Overnight valley drainage into the Sandy/Zigzag corridor, which lifts 24-hour averages even on days with clean afternoons
  • The Austin or The Narrows fire acreage doubling on Watch Duty in the next week, or any new named fire appearing within 20 miles of Welches
  • The NWS point forecast for Zigzag/Government Camp switching to east or northeast winds for August 28-30
  • A Red Flag Warning issued for east winds anywhere in the northern Oregon Cascades
  • Overnight AQI at the Multorpor monitor climbing above 100 and failing to drop back below 50 by early afternoon
  • Any Level 1 evacuation notice posted for Welches, Zigzag, or Rhododendron
  • Conversely: a rain-producing front in the extended forecast for the last week of August, which in a year this dry would meaningfully knock down all of these fires at once

Fires within 60 miles

12.5 miMitchell S16 acres
14.0 miThe Narrows SSW160 acres · 0% contained
17.4 miGrasshopper E92,399 acres · 57% contained
19.0 miAustin S3,244 acres · 0% contained
20.4 miAustin Non-Stat Ssize not yet reported
37.8 miHigh Lava N1,405 acres · 8% contained
45.5 miBench SSE67,071 acres · 90% contained

The biggest hole in this forecast: 1 of the nearby fires (Austin Non-Stat) have no size reported yet. Whether those are 300-acre creepers or 20,000-acre runners is most of the answer.

Pack this regardless

  • Two N95 or KN95 masks per person (fit-tested for the kids, not surgical masks)
  • One portable HEPA air purifier, or a box fan plus a MERV-13 furnace filter and duct tape, for the main sleeping room
  • Inhalers, allergy meds, and eye drops — including for anyone who 'doesn't usually need them'
  • A real indoor backup plan: board games, a downloaded movie or two, cards
  • Extra water and electrolytes — windows-shut plus no AC in a rental means warm, stuffy rooms
  • Car phone chargers and a screenshot of an alternate route (OR-224 to Estacada, or US-26 east to OR-35 and I-84 via Hood River) in case US-26 closes in one direction

If the weekend is clean you carried masks for nothing. If it is not, this is the difference between a bad weekend and a ruined one.

Watch list, and getting there

  • Multorpor / Government Camp PM2.5, especially overnight hourly values - 24-hour AQI above 100 on any of the three days before the trip, or overnight hourlies above 150 (fire.airnow.gov or the AirNow phone app)
  • Acreage and containment on Austin and The Narrows (the two 0%-contained fires due south) - Austin above 10,000 acres, or ANY new named fire inside 20 miles of Welches (Watch Duty app, or inciweb.wildfire.gov)
  • Wind direction in the Government Camp / Zigzag point forecast - Wind forecast from E, NE, or SE on Aug 28-30, or a Red Flag Warning issued for east winds (weather.gov (search Welches OR))
  • Near-surface smoke forecast over the Sandy River corridor - A dense plume painted over Welches on any trip day at the 72-hour lead (rapidrefresh.noaa.gov/hrrr/HRRRsmoke (or the smoke layer on the Windy app))
  • Evacuation levels for Welches / Zigzag / Rhododendron - Any Level 1 (Be Ready) covering the Mt Hood Village area (clackamas.us/emergency and the Watch Duty app)
Sandy19.4 mi
Brightwood15.6 mi
Welches14.3 mi

Distance from each point on the drive in to the nearest fire. TripCheck is the authority on closures.

If we wanted cleaner air, where would we go?

Ranked by how bad these dates have historically been at each place. The coast is not just cleaner today — it sits upwind of everything burning, so it only smokes during an east-wind reversal, which is the same event that would smoke out the house.

“Bad day / typical” is what the air actually did on Aug 26 – Sep 1 in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 — 28 days per place. The first number is the bad day: one day in ten was worse than this. The second is the typical day, the middle of the range. We rank on the bad day rather than the typical one, because the bad day is what would spoil a weekend.

Both are converted onto the same scale as the “now” column, so every AQI figure in this table is comparable. That conversion matters more than it sounds: the model these come from runs about 2.5× high on the coast but close to true inland, so before correcting it the coast looked far worse than it is.
PlaceBad day / typicalNow Official forecastNext 5 daysNearest fire
Newport coast20 / 1717 ClearGood– steady102 mi · The Narrows
Manzanita coast22 / 2126 ClearGood– steady87 mi · High Lava
Cannon Beach coast23 / 2026 ClearGood– steady88 mi · High Lava
Pacific City coast23 / 2026 ClearGood– steady91 mi · The Narrows
Astoria coast26 / 2312 ClearGood– steady84 mi · High Lava
Long Beach, WA coast27 / 2412 ClearGood– steady97 mi · High Lava
Welches / Mt Hood booked37 / 2857 HazyModerate– steady14 mi · The Narrows
Silver Falls valley45 / 3355 HazyModerate– steady33 mi · The Narrows
Portland valley48 / 3836 ClearGood– steady36 mi · High Lava
McMinnville valley53 / 3740 ClearGood– steady54 mi · The Narrows
Bend east of crest119 / 70126 SmokyModerate▲ worsening22 mi · Akawa Butte
Hood River east of crestn/a53 HazySensitive groups– steady21 mi · Grasshopper
What each column covers, and where it comes from
FieldPeriod it coversWhat it is
Air right now08/19/26 4:00 PDTNearest EPA/AirNow ground monitor to each place, within 45 miles
airnow.gov
Official forecastissued 08/19/26 by Oregon Dept. of Environmental QualityNext published outlook for that reporting area — a human forecaster's call
Oregon DEQ via AirNow
Next 5 daystoday's model run, covering 2026-08-23Direction only. Copernicus CAMS global air-quality model
open-meteo.com
Bad day / typicalAug 26 – Sep 1 in 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 (28 days each)CAMS reanalysis for those exact dates, then converted to the monitor scale
open-meteo.com
Scale conversionmedian of 14 daily model-vs-monitor pairs, 2026-07-31 to 2026-08-13Median of daily model-vs-monitor ratios — the bias differs by place, from 0.375 on the coast to 1.056 inland
AirNow daily archive
Nearest firequeried Aug 19 5:00 AMPerimeter polygons of fires over 100 acres, distance to the burned edge
NIFC WFIGS

Every AQI figure above is on the ground-monitor scale — the same thing your phone shows. n/a means the model and the monitors disagree so sharply at that spot that we cannot honestly place it on that scale (steep terrain inside a coarse model grid cell — the Gorge is the usual culprit); those rows are sorted by today’s reading instead.

How this is made, and what it cannot do

Fire perimeters from NIFC, evacuation zones from Oregon OEM, weather and alerts from NWS, air quality from AirNow (Multorpor, 8.7 mi away). The forecast is judged by Claude Opus 5 on the live data above, sampled 5 times and pooled conservatively.

It is a judgement, never scored against an outcome. Nobody forecasts smoke this far out: NOAA's smoke model runs 48 hours and the EPA's air-quality forecast is for tomorrow. Two-to-six weeks ahead is what meteorologists call the predictability desert. Anyone giving you a number for the trip right now - us included - is giving you a base rate with a story attached.

How thin the history is. The air-quality record for this spot begins in 2022, so "normal" here is built from just 4 years (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025). In those 28 sampled days the worst single day was AQI 36, and none reached 100.

That record has never seen a bad Oregon smoke year — not 2020, when Portland sat above AQI 500 for days, nor 2017, 2018 or 2021. So the base rate below is drawn entirely from calm years, and the upper end of our range is an estimate rather than something history has shown us. It is the main reason not to read the good news too confidently.

Are these forecasts any good? Across 20 scored forecast-days, the air-quality model beat both simple baselines at 1 of 5 lead times. Where it does not, this page should not be trusted to out-guess them either.

AQI here means the highest 24-hour PM2.5 value touching a day, at the house, on the local monitor scale - the same thing your phone shows. The model's own restatement of the target: “I am forecasting the US EPA AQI for PM2.5 computed as a 24-hour average — the single highest such 24-hour value touching each calendar day — at the house in Welches, Oregon, reported on the local monitor scale, i.e. the number a phone app like AirNow would display, already calibrated from the raw model output. I have applied no additional bias correction. 'Worst day of trip' means the maximum of that quantity across August 28, 29, and 30, not the three-day average.”

Updated daily at 5am. A convenience, not an authority -
if officials issue an evacuation order, follow it.