photo credit: National Weather Service
A map of the NWS air quality map on 9/20/23

Some variable weather ahead for the Bay Area. 

Smoke from major fires up north has been fouling the region's air. That should change by the weekend, as long as no local blazes flare up.

With winds expected to rise to 25 to 35 miles per hour over the North Bay mountains, and 45 over the windiest peaks, local meteorologists have issued a red flag fire warning.

Sarah McCorkle is a National Weather Service forecaster at the agency's Bay Area office. While the danger is real, she said it isn't extreme.

"We're looking at a lower end, marginal red flag event. We will start to see those off-shore northerly winds ….that will bring elevated fire weather concerns with it, which is why we have a red flag out," McCorkle said.

While relative humidity will sink, winds will peak overnight, while there's still a little moisture.

"We're seeing relative humidity values will get down to like twenty-five to thirty-five percent, ...it doesn't necessarily line up with the strongest winds, which is good news, and it's not critically dry, we're not like in the teens," McCorkle said.

As far as the smoke from distant fires being pushed our way from the north and northeast, you'll breathe easier by the weekend.

"Once those kind of die down, which will be late Thursday into Friday, we'll start to see that smoke hopefully start to dissipate. There may be some lingering smoke into Friday, but we at least won't see more coming in," McCorkle said.

And if that isn't enough, we could see something that's been rare for a number of months shortly thereafter.

"There's pretty good confidence that there will be some rain starting as early as Monday afternoon, potentially into Tuesday. The amounts and things like that are still a little bit unclear, but yeah we're looking at a pattern change coming up, early next week," McCorkle said.