Wildfire season has started early in the Canadian West, and predictions are for even more smoke than last year.
It’s extremely hazy in southern Sask right now, and I’m even seeing bits of ash floating down, although i’m well away from the fires.
So does Canada have a wildfire management policy? In the U.S. it has traditionally been to put out every little fire–resulting in a massive amount of deadwood and massive mega-fires which can’t be controlled.
I know we get it here where I live, drifting down from Canada. But we also have wildfires closer to home as well.
It’s strange how normal this is now; it’s as seasonal as longer days. This was never a thing when I was a kid.
Dunno, sorry. It wouldn’t be federal, since the Crown lands in a province belong to the province, which would set the policies.
And it would be rude to tell Alberta to stick that in their pipe and smoke it when it is ablaze. All seriousness aside, a huge federal disaster program for environmental problems might be a good idea.
While forest management policies to minimize burning and allowing surface fuels (not just deadwood but burnable grassland dead plant matter) to build up have contributed to massive wildfires in the Coastal and Sierra Nevada ranges, a bigger problem, and the one that definitely impacts central Canada, is the lack of enduring snowpack, earlier spring (encouraging grass and scrub growth) followed by much drier and hotter summer and a ‘wildfire season’ that now extends into late fall and early winter because of erratic precipitation. The “warm, dry conditions” mentioned in the Guardian article not only make fires more likely but sustain them and cause them to be more intense and faster moving, especially coupled with aggressive dry winds. This is an inevitable consequence of climate change, and specifically the heating in the Pacific Ocean changing precipitation patterns to which the forests have previously been adapted.
FACT SHEET: Climate change and wildfires in Canada.
Stranger
Yep, we’re starting to get it in my neighborhood, at the moment still pretty high up in the atmosphere but that is changing. Local air monitors say we’re still in the “good” range but we’re right on the edge of that and “moderate”.
Um… thanks for the great sunsets and sunrises…?
Stay safe up there, good neighbor.
“Central Canada” is Ontario and Quebec.
We’re the West!
Haze has got steadily worse during the day. I can no longer see the horizon.
I am not sure last season ever ended: Zombie fires.
But you’re Central Standard Time!
Why can’t you Canadians rake your forests, like Finland does? 
Right. None of that Central Daylight stuff!
Hey, I was gonna say that, you dirty ninja 
Altho’ you said it much better.
Damn. Ninja’d by solost and Beck. It was the first ting that popped into my mind when reading the thread title. If you were a state, you would be eligible for FEMA assistance. At least, until it is no more.
On a serious note, from my eastern-Iowa vantage point, it’s hazy (although I can’t smell smoke, yet) and earlier this evening, the sun was a bright orange circle in the sky, ALMOST damped down enough to look at.
One of my Canadian Facebook friends posted a picture from Lynn Lake, in northern Manitoba, that looked quite ominous. I’ll see if I can find it.
(Later) Didn’t find the exact picture, except via Facebook, but this article has plenty of dramatic pictures. I saw in another story that parts of Flin Flon, on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border, have been evacuated.
I didn’t mean to minimize it, and didn’t realize initially how bad it was. Which is dumb on my part, because these kinds of widespread fires have become too common in recent years.
This book is about the 2016 fire that destroyed part of Fort McMurray, Alberta, and led to this city of 88,000 being completely evacuated except for First Responders. I also learned a new word: “infandous”, meaning a concept too devastating to verbalize.
We had a big discussion of the fire here: