cancel2 2022
Canceled
The unusual weather that allowed the Fort McMurray fire to spread as far and fast as it did is likely to continue throughout the summer because of a strong El Nino pattern, thereby straining the abilities of fire crews to put down this and other wildfires. This year’s El Nino, a cyclical warming of southeastern Pacific Ocean waters that has weather effects around the globe, has been particularly strong, experts say, and is one reason Fort McMurray saw temperatures in the 30s this week, with low humidity and high winds.
“The profile of those (El Nino events) has often led to early springs in western Canada and high fire activity,” said Bruce Macnab, head of Wildland Fire Information Systems for the Northern Forestry Centre, a Natural Resources Canada facility in Edmonton. “There was a lot of expectation that May and June in particular would be challenging,” Macnab said. That expectation has come true — the devastation in Fort McMurray the most striking result.
“There was very low snow pack in much of western Canada. It melted early, and as you can imagine, that’s not helping things,” he said. One positive sign is that sea temperatures seem to be dropping again in the Pacific, possibly heralding a return to so-called neutral conditions. That is a slow process, though, and the continued dry heat and wind helped make the Fort McMurray fire one of the largest observed this year. Scott Bachmeier, a research meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been using satellite imagery and other tools to track and catalogue the world’s largest wildfires. He said there have been about 20 such events per year for the last three years, most of them in high latitudes, especially in the boreal forest of Canada.
Satellite imagery Wednesday showed most of the smoke from the Fort McMurray fire had moved east to the skies over Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The wildfire has come unusually early in the season. Spring wildfires are not unheard of, and given the recent dry, hot and windy conditions around Fort McMurray, they were almost expected. What sets this fire apart is not just its scale, but its proximity to a large urban centre.
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...this-a-challenging-year-for-wildfires-experts
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