Last year in Canada, a total of 7,100 fires burned in locations that stretched from one end of the country to the other. An entire city south of the Arctic Circle had to evacuate. Smoke from the blazes drifted down and darkened the skies of major American cities.
These were some scenes produced last year by Canada’s record wildfire season. Now, as warmer weather sets in, government officials are on high alert, with summer predicted to bring hotter and drier conditions that are ideal for fire.
Last year’s wildfire season started ominously, with nearly one million acres burned in the sparsely populated northern portion of Alberta, forcing thousands of residents to flee in early May.
This year, smaller fires in rural Alberta have also forced several thousand people to leave, and a prolonged drought in parts of Western Canada has officials worried that more fires could erupt in the coming weeks.
Here is the latest on Canada’s wildfire season.
Where are wildfires burning now?
Wildfire season typically runs from March until October, with fire activity usually picking up across western Canada in May.
Crews in the western provinces battled large flames that forced evacuations in several communities in mid-May. In Alberta, a wildfire led to the evacuation of about 6,600 people near Fort McMurray, an oil-producing region. It was also devastated by a forest fire in 2016 that displaced 90,000 residents and became Canada’s costliest disaster.
Evacuation orders have since been lifted, thanks to rainfall that allowed fire crews to contain the blaze.
About 4,700 evacuees in the Northern Rockies region of British Columbia are still waiting for permission to return to the town of Fort Nelson and a nearby First Nation community. Strong winds in northeast British Columbia steered wildfire toward Fort Nelson that has destroyed or damaged at least a dozen properties, officials said.
Smoke from the Canadian fires has also brought air-quality warnings in Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin.
Indigenous communities, a majority of which sit in the boreal forest, are at heightened risk of wildfires, Harjit Sajjan, Canada’s minister of emergency preparedness, said during a news conference.
He appeared alongside two other ministers to provide Canadians with a fire weather update and highlight the government’s plan to ramp up its emergency response this season, particularly in First Nations communities.
Mammoth wildfires intensified by prolonged dry conditions and extreme heat are becoming more common as a result of human-caused climate change, researchers have found, the effects of which are changing the equation for emergency preparations and redefining how Canadian officials think about wildfires.
“Our government believes in climate change,” Mr. Sajjan said.
What does the wildfire forecast show?
Based on the number of acres burned so far and the intensity of the wildfires, the season is off to a typical start, but federal officials are warning that it is still early and that more fires are likely to come.
Moving through the spring, wildfires are expected to be more prevalent in the southern region of the Northwest Territories, eastern parts of British Columbia and across the central and northern Prairies — all areas that have been under a three-year drought that shows no signs of abating.
“Unfortunately, this forecasting continues what has become an alarming, but somewhat predictable, trend of hot, dry summers that present the perfect conditions for intense fires,” Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s minister of energy and natural resources, told reporters at the news conference.
Heavy rains and a snow melt delayed by cooler weather have so far helped ward off fires by adding moisture to soil, officials said. And continued levels of precipitation could prevent the massive spread of fires that occurred last year.
But it may also have the opposite effect, Mr. Sajjan said, as thunderstorms produce lightning strikes that are responsible for igniting most wildfires.
Temperatures across Canada were slightly warmer than average in April, Piyush Jain, a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service, said in an interview.
High temperatures and arid conditions last year stoked roaring wildfires in Quebec that blanketed parts of the United States in heavy plumes of smoke, obscuring skylines and setting off warnings about unhealthy air quality.
Both Quebec and Nova Scotia were not in drought conditions at the start of 2023, but that abruptly changed in the spring because of rising temperatures and a lack of precipitation, officials said. It is difficult to predict if that kind of shift will occur again, they added.
The government has announced that it will invest in fire-safety initiatives in Indigenous communities, including distribution of fire alarms and extinguishers to residents of reserves where poor housing conditions and a lack of firefighting infrastructure are common.
The funding will help finance culturally sensitive fire management practices, such as prescribed burns, a technique of intentionally burning segments of the forest to clear dead vegetation that acts as fuel for wildfires.
Last year, Canada fast-tracked financing agreements with provinces and territories to disburse 250 million Canadian dollars for firefighting equipment and personnel that would be ready for this season, Mr. Sajjan said.
Canada will also have trained 1,000 new firefighters by the end of this year who will work with provinces and in Indigenous communities, and it is increasing money for the deployment of firefighters from abroad. More than 1,500 international firefighters assisted Canada last year.
Aid groups and humanitarian volunteer organizations are also mobilizing. The Salvation Army is sending supplies, including nonperishable food, to a handful of high-risk areas in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, Mr. Sajjan said.