The cold, humid weather has been a very slow start to BC’s wildfire season. While this is expected to continue throughout June, the end of summer could lead to more dangerous conditions, according to the latest fire forecast.
BC Wildfire meteorologist Matt MacDonald told reporters on Friday that both the number of fires and the area burned so far this spring are well below recent averages, following a rainy May that recorded average temperatures of two to two. three degrees below normal throughout the province.
This means that conditions in most of the province are not conducive to wildfires, except in some pockets south of Cariboo, the Thompson-Okanagan region and the Rocky Mountain Trench, where things have been drier than which is common.
June is expected to be just as bleak, but the forecast suggests that things will change in the second half of July, when the weather is expected to become warmer than normal.
“As we tend to these warmer-than-normal temperatures, we could see fire activity grow during the second half of the summer,” MacDonald said.
What is more difficult to predict so far is the possibility of extreme weather events such as the 2021 heat dome.
MacDonald said this unusual type of weather can usually only be predicted about two weeks in advance.
“Historically, this is the kind of event we only see every 100 years, so very rare, very exceptional, but as our climate continues to change, we can definitely expect a higher frequency,” he said.
MacDonald explained that some studies suggest that human-induced climate change could cause extreme heat events once a decade instead of once a century.
“While the likelihood of this happening again this summer is very low, it’s not impossible,” he said.
“Right now, there’s nothing like it on the horizon, but we’ll obviously be watching it all summer.”
The 2021 wildfire season was the third worst on BC records in terms of area burned. It also saw the village of Lytton virtually destroyed and two residents killed in a forest fire the day after the community saw the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada.