`Fall-like' spring keeps fire in check
Cool, wet weather has led to fewer blazes and less land burned than average, so far
Cool, wet spring weather has helped reduce the risk of early season wildfires across many parts of B.C., according to a provincial wildfire outlook released Friday, but there are signs that the end of July and August may be warmer than usual.
Matt Macdonald, lead forecaster for the B.C. Wildfire Service, said June is expected to stay cool and rainy before a return to “seasonal values” in July. And the end of summer could be a sizzler.
As a result, it's been a “slow start” to wildfire season, said Macdonald, with 137 fires and six square kilometres burned so far. That's about 60 per cent of the five-year average number of fires in May, and only five per cent of the 25year average of land burned.
Lightning, which causes about half of the fires in B.C. in a normal year, hasn't led to any fires in May, likely due to the heavy snowpack still blanketing mountains. In a typical May, there are about 35 lightning starts. But not all of B.C. has been wet.
Macdonald said this spring's weather pattern has been “falllike,” with precipitation coming from the southwest, leading to more rain and snow on west-facing slopes and a rain-shadow effect in parts of the southern Cariboo, the Thompson-okanagan region and the Rocky Mountain Trench in the southeast part of the province. In some areas, “much drier” conditions than normal could create the potential for fires to get very large.
The forecaster said it's too early to predict extreme weather events, like the heat dome that settled over B.C. in late June last year. Extreme weather is usually observable only about two weeks ahead of time.
Forests Minister Katrine Conroy repeated “B.C. is ready for wildfire season,” saying she was happy with the June outlook.
She emphasized the work that has been done to transition the B.C. Wildfire Service from a seasonal service to a year-round one, as well as $359 million in new funding announced in the 2022 budget to protect British Columbians from wildfires.
“This is the largest investment in the history of the wildfire service and is helping transform the organization into a year-round service and shift from its current reactive model to a more proactive approach,” she said.