Canada has already surpassed a year’s worth of charred land from wildfires

Wildfires across Canada are devouring land at a pace unseen in any year other than the historic 2023 season.

With more than 7.8 million acres burned, according to Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre data, the season has already raced past the annual average, even when including the past two major fire seasons.

The 25-year average for land burned is 7.3 million acres. This year’s tally is poised to finish well above normal.

Dozens of active wildfires are burning from northern British Columbia and Alberta in a belt extending southeastward to Ontario. Many new blazes have started in recent weeks as a result of lightning, which is a common fire starter. The most intense fire activity has shifted its focus westward over recent days, partly a result of high heat in the country’s west and increased rainfall in central Canada.

The wildfires, mostly burning in dense boreal forest, continue to send thick smoke far from the source. Much of southwest and south-central Canada is under an air quality alert Tuesday, including the cities of Edmonton and Regina, where air quality reached Code Red levels in the morning.

Some locations closer to Alberta experienced hazardous air quality.

Multiple massive fires of greater than 250,000 acres are ongoing in five provinces.

• British Columbia has two of those huge out-of-control conflagrations, among 86 active wildfires there, and including one closing in on 500,000 acres in the province’s far north that is suspected to have carried over from last year after smoldering through the winter. Another to its south grew rapidly during recent days, past 295,000 acres, leading to evacuation orders for rural indigenous First Nations regions Sunday.

• To the east, in Alberta, there are 60 active fires, five of which are 120,000 acres or larger and classified as out of control. The largest fire, sparked by lightning and mostly burning north of Edmonton, in oil country and forestland, was past 320,00 acres (130,000 hectares) as of Monday.

• Central Saskatchewan’s Shoe Fire — 100 miles north of Saskatoon — is the largest in the nation overall, now past 1.2 million acres in size. Despite improving conditions, evacuations from 33 rural communities continue, according to local reports. The entire area had notable rainfall in recent days, which has assisted in reducing imminent risks. Hot spots persist, especially on the southern flank.

• Manitoba has five out-of-control fires greater than 120,000 acres, the largest of which has blackened more than 740,000 acres near Flin Flon, on the province’s western border with Saskatchewan. Another northeast of Winnipeg has scorched more than 530,000 acres. Both have grown much more slowly in recent days thanks to increased moisture.

• In Ontario, the largest blaze is 370,000-plus acres, while a number of fires are also surrounding Kenora in the province’s southwest. Like blazes in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, those in Ontario have generally been subdued by recent wetter conditions.

The moisture in the central and eastern portion of the country has lowered the risk of new fires in the short term, with much of the region from Manitoba eastward now at low to moderate fire danger, according to Natural Resources Canada.

Fire weather remains considerably more volatile in the west, where much of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia are under high to extreme risk.

And while the threat has decreased in the central portion of the country recently, it could quickly bounce back should drier and warmer air make a return. The next round of above-normal temperatures is forecast there by the weekend.

Fire season in Canada usually peaks during the summer to early fall, although recent years have tended to see that extended on both ends.

Canada has experienced warming at least two times faster than the rest of the globe. Traced to human-caused climate change, warmer temperatures are leading to less snow, shorter and milder winters and earlier onset of the summertime conditions that foster fires.

Experts have warned that this year may echo the unprecedented destruction of 2023. When fires that season scorched through 42.7 million acres, it outdid the previous top year by more than eight times the average.