My initial reaction too.
Fires can smoulder for a long time with very little oxygen. The peat insulates it and absorbs the snow melt. Without heavy rains those fires can burn a long time. It could be worse.
Snow is actually full of air spaces, usually, unless it’s been really compacted. When we were kids, we’d sometimes bury each other in the snow, and it was no harder to breathe than being under a blanket.
As for the melting, the water doesn’t come down uniformly. There will be dry spots, like in any rainy situation, and that’s enough to keep things smoldering.
Also, snow cover is just weird.
So, that underground fire raged for 20 years or more and pretty much ate the entire town? I agree, that qualifies as “worse”.
Current predictions estimate it will burn for the next 250 years.
Thanks for the tip! Just put it on hold at my local library.
and Fort McMurray is being evacuated again.
All they have is a Kindle version of the book? I don’t have a Kindle device.
The library sounds like a good idea, and I need something to read during my 3-week summer break.
aren’t libraries wonderful?
this might go without saying, but you might want to get something light-hearted to read as well. I found Fire Weather very interesting but…well, it’s not fun.
Damn. Those poor people.
Got it in paperback as well as hardcover at Amazon. Pricey, though, even more than Kindle. I’m getting the hardcover from my library since there are illustrations.
Thanks! Just ordered it in paperback version. I’ll read it when I go on summer break. Perfect timing! 
Excellent! I’ll be picking up the book at the library this afternoon.
Meanwhile, ABC has this May 15 update on the wildfires, and it is depressingly grim.
My God, and to think that all these fires are releasing even more CO2 into the atmosphere. I hold little hope in our future.
I knew that last year, the wildfires released more CO2 into the atmosphere than Canada’s non-fire anthropogenic releases. What I didn’t take into consideration at the time was that Canada is a top 10 GHG producer in its own right, so if you list the top 10 GHG sources of 2024, you’d have something like China, USA, Australia, Canada, Canadian wildfires, etc. Since China and USA are so huge by themselves, the overall contribution is not that high, percentage-wise, but it’s a definite move in the wrong direction.
That’s nothing; Burning Mountain in Australia hosts a coal fire that has been burning for over 6000 years.
Has anyone suggested that Canadians give their forests a thorough raking? I hear that helps.
On a serious note, I dread the smoke season here. It used to be occasional but now it appears to be almost every year. I’ve had to modify vacation plans multiple times due to fires and smoke (backpacking and camping trips) and it sucks.
One topic being discussed here in the western US is how forest management practices have contributed to making fires in this region more intense with the input from climate change. The whole fire suppression strategy for the last 100 years has resulted in unhealthy, dense, and un-natural forests that when dried-out from a few years of climate change-caused drought, are burning much more ferociously and destructively than they may have in times past. Is this theory being applied with these Canadian fires as well - are those northern forests unhealthy as a result of human activity and management?
Rain and cooler temps may help at Fort McMurray:
In my previous post I was making fun of a former administrators explanation of forest management, but I can guarantee that the National Forests in my area need management! There are areas with so much dead downfall and underbrush that they will be raging fires when it gets there. Good logging practices are not happening and the lumber mills are shutting down because of this.
My book arrived and, although I only gave it a cursory once over, I am very impressed. The work is 356 pages long and has dozens of pages of cites and notes. It appears to be a very serious work. When I’m back from my break in the middle of July, I’ll post a critique in the Cafe section.