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.