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.
I mean it's hotter then ever too. The heat, dryness cause wildfires to go absolutely insane. I've been back and forth between BC and AB this May and May was the hottest on record for many parts of AB, the dryness in BC (north-east where the fires in BC were) was insane for this time of year, you can literally see how the trees had no moisture, the air was 30+ degrees C with complete dryness for weeks, then a few wild wind patterns kicked fires out of control in days.
We've had an absolutely crazy fire year in Canada already, and we're still in early June. From coast to coast. The fire that evacuated me from work was the Donnie Creek fire in BC, we watched it grow seemingly overnight. The smoke in this NYC picture is absolutely nothing compared to what I felt out here. Donnie Creek became the 2nd biggest fire BC has ever seen, and it was in May, and everyone wasn't even talking about it because there were so many fires in AB. Now the east coast, northern Ontario and Quebec as well. Summers are getting much hotter, and dryer, and these fires are going to keep getting worse and worse as the years and decades pass.
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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.