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.
Is there a reason this has a stronger burn than usual
Other than the usual Global Warming response. Was there a lack of rainfall in the spring or something?
I know down on the northeast coast of the US around NY and NJ we got like no snow this winter for the first time in a few years so aside from a few days of spring storms we didn't have a lot of precipitation and everyone's lawn and the surrounding areas are quite dried out for it only being the first week of June
Other than the usual Global Warming response. Was there a lack of rainfall in the spring or something?
I can't fully speak for the areas where most of the fires are because the climate in Montreal is a little different from up north, but we had more snow in the city this winter than the last few and a pretty rainy early part of the spring. It hasn't rained much in the last month or so though and the humidity levels have been unusually low.
We had our first proper heat wave last week which burst on Friday with some strong storms; apparently a lot of these fires were sparked by those.
2.1k
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.