“Those fires can be locally important but are not as prolific as smoke producers compared to forest fires,” he said.Īccuweather’s 2023 fire season projection is for an overall average to above-average season they guess that over eight million acres will burn in the U.S., which would edge out the seven million or so that have burned on average from 2001 through 2020. Still, Bond told The Messenger that while there can be such increased fire activity in wetter years thanks to increased growth of grasses and shrubs, that may not be quite as bad news as it seems. CalFire, California’s forest and fire protection department, has warned of this very possibility. And the wet winter could actually increase the risk of fire later in the season: the moisture helped plants grow rapidly, meaning there will be more fuel when inevitable warm stretches hit. The National Interagency Fire Center’s latest projection, issued June 1, predicts below-normal fire activity in parts of California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico this month, with some areas of higher risk in Washington and Oregon, as well as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.īy July and August, those areas of below-normal risk shrink to almost nothing, and the above-normal regions bubble outward to include parts of Alaska, Idaho, and Nevada. Thanks to the exceptionally wet winter in California and other western states, fire activity so far has been below normal. will likely only ramp up its burning later in the summer. The quick start to the season up north could mean the continent is in for an extended severe fire season, as the western U.S. “But there is plenty of variability in that flow so there will be better - and worse - days.” “Typical flows across North America do tend to bring air from the general location of the fires in Canada to the northeastern US,” said Nick Bond, a senior research scientist at the University of Washington and the Washington state climatologist. That doesn’t mean the eastern part of the country is doomed to breathe hazardous air all summer, though. That’s around 12 times the average at this point in the year, and 2023 is already closing in on the most damaging wildfire seasons on record in Canada. The wildfires have already burned more than three million hectares (about 7.4 million acres), an area almost the size of Maryland. July and August projections are much the same. Natural Resources Canada’s wildfire projection for June shows a “well above average” risk for most of the country, from British Columbia on the west coast all the way through the eastern edge of Ontario. “We need to treat smoke waves like disasters, which includes making resources available for impacted communities to protect themselves prepare for, respond to, and recover from heavy wildfire smoke,” said Alistair Hayden, an assistant professor in Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of public and ecosystem health. Detroit and New York City both ranked among the most polluted cities in the world on Wednesday, according to IQAir, with air on par with that of Delhi, Hanoi and Dhaka. The plumes of smoke from these fires have moved south, triggering air quality alerts across many highly populated areas. Hundreds of fires are still burning in Quebec and further west in British Columbia and Alberta, driven by abnormally hot and dry conditions. “Our modeling shows this may be an especially severe wildfire season throughout this summer,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this week. As smoke from Canadian wildfires blankets New York, Washington D.C., and much of the eastern U.S., seasonal projections and experts suggest this could be just the beginning of a summer of dangerously bad air for millions across North America.
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