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Wildfire Today

Tag: Canada

PHOTOS: Birch Lake Complex, Northwest Territories

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Reader D. Cote with Yukon Wildland Fire Management sent us impressive photos of the South Slave fire, one of four massive fires burning in Canada’s Northwest Territories area. The Birch Lake Complex has burned more than 530,000 acres. Read his account below.

D. Cote, Yukon Wildland Fire Management
D. Cote, Yukon Wildland Fire Management

“(The fire) made a major run on the afternoon of July 14th with estimated spread rates of 150 – 200 meters a minute. With a 10 km flame front bearing down on the staging area the ignition team pulled off a ‘Hail Mary’ burn out (heli-torch, lower left in photo) which managed to save the (communications) tower, fire lookout tower and cabin as well as all the heavy equipment…

The fire is SS (South Slave district – NWT) #20, one of four fires in the Birch Lake Complex, which is over 220,000 hectares ( + or – 530,000 acres). (South Slave) alone is 125,000 hectares or so…The day the fire made that run was 36 C (97 F) with a 17% RH. Pretty exceptional for this part of the world.  Fire behavior analysts on the incident clocked the spread rates of any where from 150 to 200 meters a minute  (a meter is roughly one yard).”
 

British Columbia town emptied as fire advances

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

 


The entire town of Hudson’s Hope in northeastern British Columbia has been emptied as the nearby Mount McAllister fire spreads out of control.

The wildfire was ignited by lightning on Sunday, and had grown to more than 20,000 hectares (more than 49,000 acres) by Thursday.

Local officials went door-to-door through the town, urging the town’s 1,150 residents to evacuate, The Huffington Post reported. 

The Mount McAllister fire is one of more than 100 wildfires currently raging in British Columbia, where tinder-dry conditions have fueled one of the worst fire seasons the province has seen in a decade.

Alberta: Spreading Creek Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

The Alberta department of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development posted this video of the Spreading Creek fire. It includes scenes showing a briefing for firefighters, hose lays, sprinklers, fireline construction in heavy timber, helicopter drops, and single engine air tankers. It was uploaded to YouTube on June 11, 2014.

Thanks and a hat tip go out to JW.

Canadian fires continue to rage, “worst fire season in years”

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , ,

Dry heat is fueling several out of control wildfires in Alberta and British Columbia this week, where fire officials say this is the worst fire season the region has seen since 2003.

There are 156 fires burning in Canada’s Northwest Territories, The Toronto Sun reports.

As of Monday morning, around 11 fires were burning out of control in Alberta, according to the province’s wildfire situation report. Meanwhile, the explosive Spreading Creek fire near Banff National Park, British Columbia, is being held for the first time since lightning ignited it on July 3, The Calgary Herald reported. The fire had burned more than 6,800 hectares (around 16,800 acres) as of July 14.

The fire has intermittently shut down parts of the Icefields Parkway that winds from Banff to Jasper. Photos capturing its spectacular plume of smoke have sparked an international interest in the fire.

 

While fires spread on both sides of the national park, conditions are no different in BC’s interior, where a fire ignited on Tuesday in tinder-dry country near West Kelowna. The so-called Mount Boucherie fire had burned around 12 acres by Tuesday evening, and was being held by fire retardant lines, local media reported. The fire continued to burn into Tuesday night.

West Kelowna is in a fire-prone corridor known for regular wildfires. In 2003 in nearby Kelowna, lightning ignited the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, which went on to burn hundreds of homes and prompted the largest fire-evacuation in Canadian history.

I’ve spent some time in Kelowna and last year wrote a story about the Okanagan Mountain fire, ten years after the historic blaze. It had some eerie parallels to another wildfire, the Waldo Canyon fire, which I covered while working at The Gazette in Colorado Springs. Read my story on the Okanagan Mountain fire here. 

Smoke in the Southwest and Canada

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags
Smoke from Oak, Diego, and San Juan Fires, 6-30-2014
Smoke from Oak, Diego, and San Juan Fires, 6-30-2014. Wildfire Today and WeatherUnderground

Smoke from three fires in southwest Arizona and northern New Mexico is having a significant impact in those states as well as in parts of Texas Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas.

But that smoke is small potatoes compared to what is going on in northern Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and off the coast of New Brunswick. The smoke that is now over the Atlantic probably drifted across much of Canada and parts of New England.

Smoke in Canada and US

There is not much current information available about the Diego Fire on the Santa Fe National Forests in New Mexico, but we determined that it is 25 miles northwest of Los Alamos, 7 miles southwest of Coyote, and 67 miles north of Albuquerque. It is listed at 1,000 acres at Inciweb, but it appears to be much larger than that in the satellite imagery we have seen.

The Oak and San Juan Fires in southwest Arizona are listed at 11,000 and 5,700 acres, respectively.

To see the most current smoke reports on Wildfire Today, visit the articles tagged “smoke” at https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/smoke/