In his 30 years of living in the Seattle area, wildfire expert Dave Peterson can’t recall a time before 2017 when the city was blanketed with an unhealthy smoky haze.

Even more unusual, he said, we’ve now had a smoky Seattle summer for two years straight.

“Last year was out of the norm. It was horrible last year and now we’ve had two in a row,” said Peterson, a University of Washington forest biology professor who recently retired from the