Alberta wildfire season below average: official

Alberta's current wildfire season is slightly below average, with the province now past the critical May green-up period that historically has seen some of the largest fires.

As of Sunday, there are 13 active wildfires in the forest protection area, with six classified as being held and seven under control.

“None of them are considered wildfires of note at this time, so we're confident that we have them contained and they will be extinguished in due time,” said wildfire information officer Josee St- Onge.

The total of 426 wildfires is slightly below the five-year average, she said.

“We're right in what we can expect in a normal wildfire season,” she said. “We've had about just under 13,000 hectares of forest burned so far. It's more than last year at this time of year, but it's much less than our five-year average, which includes years where we had enormous wildfires by this time.”

The largest wildfire that has burned so far is 8,300 hectares in size but it is located in a very isolated area, in the province's northwest High Level Forest Area, with no risk to infrastructure.

“We're managing it but letting it burn, so that's why it's gotten to that size,” St- Onge said. “But we still consider that a fire that's being held, so there's no concern that it will escape beyond the kind of established boundaries that we have for it.”

Another wildfire north of Rocky Mountain House prompted an evacuation earlier this month. That wildfire reached 12.7 hectares in size and is now extinguished.

Over the last five years, Alberta's largest wildfires have struck in May, which means the province is now past what is considered a “critical time period” where it is very dry and the leaves have not started to green up.

“We're past that point now, so that critical time is behind us, but of course, there's a lot of summer left,” she said.

The province is however expecting an average summer, with near or slightly above normal temperatures and normal precipitation for June and July. But some isolated pockets could still remain very dry.

“For example right now, while we got some rain that brought the fire danger down in southern Alberta and along the Rocky Mountains, there's still very high fire danger in the northeast corner of the boreal forest, the Fort Mcmurray-lac La Biche areas just because they haven't gotten much rain in the last few weeks,” St- Onge said. “All it takes is one extended period of dry and hot weather to quickly bring up the fire danger in the province. So we still urge everyone to be careful when they're spending time in the forest.”