Madison Erhardt
UPDATE: 11:50 a.m
It was a busy night for Mother Nature.
Thunder and lightning struck the region shortly before midnight on Wednesday night.
BCWS fire information officer Taylor MacDonald says there was a total of 1,213 lightning strikes at the Kamloops Fire Center last night.
“The fire starts were from the Lillooet fire area, there was nothing in the Okanagan. There’s been a total of seven starts so far. We’re anticipating more,” MacDonald said.
Just before the storm hit the region, BC Wildfire responded to several new wildfires at the Coastal Fire Center caused by lightning.
“Supported by firefighting aircraft, personnel are currently responding to 10 wildfires in the North and Mid-Island fire zones,” BC Wildfire said in a tweet.
Neal McLoughlin, superintendent of predictive services for BC’s wildfire service, says holdover fires raise concerns for crews.
“A good test would be where we have lightning that’s associated with a thunderstorm and maybe some of that associated rain doesn’t allow the fire to grow and be detected immediately, so we’ll usually see the fire show up. , two, maybe even three days later he said.”
Environment Canada has issued a severe thunderstorm watch, which is in effect for the central, north and south Okanagan.
ORIGINAL: 10:55 a.m
BC Wildfire Service reports seven new fires after last night’s storm.
Wildfire Information Officer Taylor Colman said most of Wednesday evening’s dry lightning was in the Fraser Valley through the Fraser Canyon and near Lillooet.
Colman said BCWS crews have spotted seven new fires in that area, all of which are currently local in size, and crews are working on them Thursday morning.
“There was also lightning in North Thompson and around Clearwater. But up there, they did get about 20 millimeters of rain with it, so no new fires were detected,” Colman told Castanets Kamloops.