The last 24 hours
The GIS perimeter still reads 172,705 acres, 81% contained (perimeter dated Sep 15, 8:47 AM PDT, about 31.4 hours old at capture) — unchanged from this morning in acreage, containment, and distance to the fire itself (5.2 mi NNE). InciWeb's update posted today at 1:26 PM PDT carries the same acreage and containment, personnel steady at 687, and describes moderate fire behavior following recent precipitation — smoldering and consumption of heavy dead/down fuels, with localized creeping and backing only where surface fuels have dried.
The real change is in the Sheriff's evacuation-zone layer, not the fire itself. This morning's zone query returned four features; this afternoon's returns two (confirmed directly against the county's live ArcGIS service, not a script error). Gone are the Level 1 "Get Ready" ring that sat 2.0 mi NNE of the house — the single closest zone in the county's map, last edited Sep 1 — and a smaller, separately-drawn Level 3 outlier 14.3 mi NE, last edited Sep 3. What remains is the same Level 3 "Go Now" ring at 5.1 mi N (unedited since Sep 3) and the distant Stehekin Level 1 ring at 39.7 mi N — making that Level 3 ring the nearest zone of any kind to the house now, essentially matching the fire perimeter's own distance.
Nothing in today's sweep confirms this as a formal stand-down. The county's own active-emergencies page, updated today at 2:30 PM PDT, describes the existing Level 3 zone as reaching south to Deep Creek/Lower Chiwawa River Road, affecting Alder Creek and Goose Creek Flat — wording that reads like an expansion, but Alder Creek sits right at that zone's already-mapped southern edge (about 5.1 mi N), and the zone's edit timestamp hasn't moved since Sep 3. Read together: the dropped Level 1 ring looks like a genuine reduction, and the county page's wording looks like standing description rather than new growth — but neither source says outright that anything was lifted, so treat it as provisional until the next run confirms it holds or the zone reappears. The rest of the sweep found nothing new (lakewenatcheeinfo.com and Lake Chelan Now: Sep 11–12; wasmoke.blogspot.com: Sep 11; general search: stale acreage articles only, discarded).
VIIRS logged 20 detections region-wide, identical in count to this morning, with the same single nearest detection 41.7 mi N now 13 hours old (FRP 1.31, nominal confidence). All five near-Plain clusters are unchanged from this morning — same distances, detection counts, and distinct-day spans (last new day Sep 11, five days stale) — and remain persistent: 6.1 mi NE (6 over 2 days), 6.7 mi NE (16 over 3 days), 8.5 mi NNE (3 over 2 days), 8.9 mi NNE (9 over 3 days), 10.1 mi NNE (8 over 2 days).
Fire weather
This afternoon is light and southeasterly, around 2 mph — blowing toward the fire, away from Plain — sunny, high 73. Tonight turns north, around 1 mph, technically the drainage-danger direction but negligible at this speed, clear, low 43. Thursday shifts northwest, around 2 mph — the favorable quadrant — sunny, high 81. No sustained north/northeast wind appears in this forecast window, and no fire-weather (red flag) alert is in effect. InciWeb repeats the warming/drying trend first flagged this morning: high pressure building, temperatures up 10–15°F, minimum humidity down to 20–35% by Friday and through the weekend.
Air quality
Modeled AQI at the house is 50 (PM2.5 2.4 µg/m³) — Good, in the recent range.
Roads: no new road blocks logged.
What I'd watch
- Whether the dropped Level 1 zone (2.0 mi NNE) reappears next run — if it does, this cycle's read was a mid-edit data gap, not a stand-down.
- Whether InciWeb or the county page ever states plainly that the advisory nearest the house was lifted, rather than leaving it to infer from the map.
- The Friday–weekend warming/drying window InciWeb keeps flagging, against a forecast that still shows no wind shift toward Plain.