Today has the potential to be a fairly significant day for fire weather threat over much of the NW US. GOES-West observed surface dryness and dryness anomaly over the past 7 days (images above) indicates significant drying of potential fuels over much of the western US, with a relative maximum over much of eastern OR and into ID, CA and NV. This agrees well with the observed Predictive Service Area dryness product.
A relatively strong vorticity max for the area is expected to move through this afternoon and bring with it some moderate instability with low PW and surface RH. Storms are expected to track fairly quick, so even if there was a chance of wetting occurring at the surface, the duration would be limited, so the potential for dry thunder is fairly high. Given the good amount of instability, the amount of lightning strikes will be relatively high, which increases the potential for new fire starts. The NSSL-WRF experimental lightning threat output shows this to some degree during the 2300-0200 UTC time periods of the 24th and the 25th of August (see images below).
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