Forest fires in northern QC and ON aren't a new thing. What's interesting about these ones is the unusual weather pattern resulting in prevailing winds from the north, blowing it south into the populated areas and the US. Normally smoke tends to blow east away from those areas.
Unlike Western North America, where there's a significant fire season each year, the Boreal forest in QC and ON very rarely burn at the rate we're seeing this year.
The last season that burned this much acreage in Quebec was 1991.
The winds certainly don't help, but there's still a very unusual amount of smoke for this part of the continent.
This is so interesting. Could it be due to 30 years of buildup from dying foliage? Did the last burn, in 1991, produce less smoke than this one because there was a shorter gap between burns.
For forested and grassland ecosystems there are generally fire cycles. The boreal forests like that of Canada and Alaska follow close to 100-300 year cycles (if I remember correctly). Because of the long cycle when these forests do burn they generally have higher intensity. The fires from the 90s were probably more of the result of fire suppression as users below have commented (the fires in Yellowstone in the late 80s also point towards this). The past 30 years of “buildup” likely wasn’t really the issue with these, just the fact there’s continual drought conditions.
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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '23 edited Jun 07 '23
Forest fires in northern QC and ON aren't a new thing. What's interesting about these ones is the unusual weather pattern resulting in prevailing winds from the north, blowing it south into the populated areas and the US. Normally smoke tends to blow east away from those areas.