how are our friends,and others,in Canada doing?
the fires brought smoke all the way to Minneapolis and a friend who worked in LaRonge some years ago saw the photos of the air port there and said his old home was close by.
this sounds like a real life BOB situation.

I have a place in northeastern Wisconsin and have received notification of poor air quality due to downstream smoke there.

I do hope our friends to the north are OK.

It's an unusually active fire season. We've had a pretty serious drought in a lot of places. Most of the worst fires are in the top half of the Western Canadian provinces, which is boreal forest country. Long distances, remote communities, limited road access, and oodles of dry fuel. Lightning starts a lot of fires in these conditions.

I'm farther south. No direct forest fire hazards here, though we were under a total fire ban until a few weeks ago. When the winds aligned, though, we get hit pretty hard from the smoke from those northern fires. Just a few days ago the air quality hazard was 10 (worst) on a scale of 1-10.

Well when 13000 people are told to evacuate,its definitely time for the BOB to get some exercise. In actuality, the people in north-central Saskatchewan were either flown or driven to relief centres in cities in the southern part of the province. There was a video posted of some guy fleeing the firestorm in his vehicle which looked pretty scary. https://www.facebook.com/michelle.hopper.501/videos/10153116777054234/

Our province brought in equipment and resources from eastern Canada and eventually brought in the army and the reserves to provide additional support. La Ronge (central airdrome for the far north) basically had fire on its perimeter.

Some of the fires had really gotten out of control and encroached on a number of communities. Some remote cabins and houses were burnt out. The smoke from the area blew south as far as the Dakotas; particulates in the air created health warnings for asthma sufferers, the elderly and very young. The air quality index went from low to very high for many days (high is bad). Building operators turned off their air ventilation to combat the heavy smoke which at times looked like heavy fog.

The western 3 provinces are basically in a drought situation with very little rain this year. So when lightning or man-made sources lit the forests, there was little to stop it. It wasn't until the rain of the last couple of days that relief has been brought to the region.

Interesting article on the people who fight wildfires, their training, and tactics:
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/insi...5583/story.html

It's worth noting that there is a large international component to wildfire fighting. Trained and experienced crews from both the U.S. and Canada move across the border frequently, through a "mutual assistance" approach. I read somewhere that we also have crews from Mexico and New Zealand helping out in Canada right now.

Here on the west coast of Canada, it is extremely dry. A few weeks ago we had record breaking temperatures and an unprecedented province wide campfire / open fire ban was put into effect due to the lack of rain.

For a few days in early July, the Vancouver area skies were completely blotted out from the smoke and many compared to the environment of Mars.

Although the weather has cooled a bit, today on the morning news, they reported 150 fires currently burning in the province. This is down from a high of 200 fires last week as some areas received some cooler temperatures along with some rain so fire crews were able to make progress. The downside of rain is that up in the interior is that it usually brings lightening strikes which starts even more fires.

Here the fire fighting budget was burned through (no pun intended) weeks ago and is at about 100 million dollars as of a few days ago. Also there was a lot public and political pressure to bring the Martin Mars Water Bomber out of retirement

Like many western provinces, fire crews have brought in from all over North America along with overseas crews from Australia.

This weekend, the weather is once again well above average but is expected to cool down next mid week. We still have about 3 months of fire season so it is expected to be a long and hot summer.

Those BC fires have affected our sunsets in DC.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capi...wildfire-smoke/


Interesting satellite view:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capi...e-on-satellite/


.

60 new fires reported in the last 24 hours for BC.

In Saskatchewan, the fires are starting to die down and the Canadian Military is being pulled back from assisting.

I cannot ever recall such a dry May, June and July. Along with wilfire threats, The Metro Vancouver area has moved to Stage 3 water restrictions.

Also here, due to the drought, the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has closed fishing in most streams and rivers until at least through the end of September.

Hard to fathom that with all the drought like conditions, the Pacific Northwest - particularly in the southwest coast region, is actually classified as a rain forest environment.