How's the air you breathe today? Can you smell the smoke from the wildfires in Quebec? (June 2023)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Depends on a lot of factors.

This summer I visited Drummond Island, Michigan. About a 80-100 years ago (I don’t remember the exact number) they have a big forest fire. There are still parts of the affected area that have not yet fully recovered. Part of the problem there is thin topsoil - any area where post-fire exposed soil was washed away it’s just bare rock now. A relatively short growing season doesn’t help, either.

The point being that recovery from a bad burn can take longer than us city folk might suppose.

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Light haze today.

In more positive news, the folks from the NWT now have a sign-up schedule for return to their homes. Hay River and Yellowknife were both evacuated, as was K’átł’odeeche First Nation.

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That’s exactly what the fire officials in the NWT are saying:

“We will need to adapt to living with fire,” he said. “It’s very likely these fires will need to be managed till snowfall.”

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From the Stuff You Never Thought You’d Ever See file …
A fire “hurricane” in the Northwest Territories headed for Nunavut:

(Not actually a hurricane, but it sure resembles one).

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And today in Florida we have lousy air quality due to smoke (well, Pm2.5) from, you guessed it, fires in Quebec. And fires in a few other US places, but mostly Quebec.

It’s bad enough youse guys send us all half your elderly drivers every winter, now they gotta send the smoke out ahead of them so they’ll feel at home when they get here? Sheesh! :wink:

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And it looks like we didn’t get enough snow this winter. Certainly not here, Chez Pipers. We never had much snow. Sounds worse up North.

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Fire plus little rain, they’ve got to run out of wood eventually.

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If that happens, it’ll cause huge other problems.

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Zombie fires? Who even knew this was a thing?

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Yes, I’ve heard of them. It used to be rare, but I think we’ll have to get used to them. Snow pack was down, two years running.

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Interesting. Canadian cities did not do well given a difficult summer.