2024 Wildfire Season

[Cloud Cover]

I guess it’s time to start this thread, as some of last seasons fires are flaming up in BC and Alberta.

Some initial points from BC- we remain in drought and with the majority of the North East in Extreme Drought.

• did not receive much snow and in some places no snow at all;
• mountain snow pack is - (in most places) - on the south end of the low range and in some ranges there is no snow at all;
• lakes levels in the interior are very low and will worsen week by week this year.

A new video from BC Wildfire recapping the 2023 Wildfire season, with particular note to 6 firefighters lost in a single year.

A link to a map of BC Drought Conditions and a screen shot. ( things look ugly up in the Peace again).

Story Map Series

This story map was created with the Story Map Series application in ArcGIS Online.

governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com

Although it’s safe to say it will be a very busy year, if managed and resourced properly perhaps the BCG won’t bother the military this year. They do seem to have caught the foreign firefighter bug, with some countries actively bidding to send people up here.

However- there are lots of jobs postings: Employment with the BC Wildfire Service

Lots of business contract opportunities: Wildfire Contract Opportunities

Training: Information on Wildfire Training

 

[daftandbarmy]

Here we go again...

‘I am really worried’: B.C. premier braces for another potential dangerous summer drought​

B.C. could be in for another very dry summer, with the premier expressing concern about what could come.

David Eby’s concerns come at a critical time, with low snowpack reported on many of the province’s mountains.

“The weather that we’re having is so unpredictable and so extreme right now that the economic impacts and the human impacts in our province are much more acute, like we’re the early warning sign for the rest of Canada about what’s coming with climate change,” Eby said Thursday.

B.C.’s snow basins provide crucial water as they melt in the spring.

Data from the BC River Forecast Centre shows snow basins are lower now than they were the same time last year.

B.C. drought: Premier worried about summer 2024

B.C. could be in for another very dry summer, with the premier expressing concern about what could come in just a few months.

vancouver.citynews.ca

 

[Cloud Cover]

Lots of local and town council meetings right now dealing with this matter. Not just fires but the drought. We likely won’t have enough feed for livestock and the US producers will try to buy everything they can from Canada again. And because this is BC where the tradition of blading each other grows stronger every week- square bale hay will probably go as high as 25$ again. Which means higher grocery prices, and less local product to local market. Exactly the opposite to the model of domestic food security.

 

[Kirkhill]

Clean B.C. is quietly using coal and gas power from out of province. Here’s why | The Narwhal

Behind the sheen of its CleanBC program, the province holds back hydro power to instead import cheap electricity from 12 states including Wyoming, Utah, Nebraska and Montana which generate 55 to 90 per cent of their power from coal

thenarwhal.ca

Lots of local and town council meetings right now dealing with this matter. Not just fires but the drought. We likely won’t have enough feed for livestock and the US producers will try to buy everything they can from Canada again. And because this is BC where the tradition of blading each other grows stronger every week- square bale hay will probably go as high as 25$ again. Which means higher grocery prices, and less local product to local market. Exactly the opposite to the model of domestic food security.

Similar on this side of the Rockies. Talking about water management in Lethbridge. Our tap water is already starting to taste like river bottom.

I wonder how much hydro power BC will be generating, let along exporting.

 

[Rifleman62]

David Eby should take some of the carbon tax funds out of general revenue and purchase some modern fire fighting equipment including aircraft.

Seeing helicopters carrying buckets on the huge fires last year does not appear efficient except for specific purposes (spot fires/inaccessible terrain).

21 Aug 21: Trudeau said a re-elected Liberal government would spend $500 million to train and equip 1,000 new firefighters across the country, who would be ready to spring into action before the next wildfire season. The money would also buy equipment such as water bombers and helicopters.

2022: Justin Trudeau committed $500 million over five years to help the provinces fight wildfires. Justin Trudeau also promised to train 1,000 new firefighters by the summer of 2022. It is a year past due and this program is still in development and for 2022, the Liberals barely committed one sixth of the annual funding needed to keep pace with their promise.

2024: ????????

 

[Cloud Cover]

I believe there is a proposal being circulated that will require the government to (1) provide some form of wildfire training and support to every fit, able bodied person who lives in a wildfire interface area; (2) require forestry, road construction, contractor and mining companies to identify personnel and equipment that can be used for firefighting and to put them on a standby roster for deployment. The idea being to shift wildfire fighting from a branch of government activity to a whole of community and industry effort. Apparently for the second point, this is how it used to be done and it was managed quite well until Victoria and the public sector unions took it over.

 

[daftandbarmy]

I believe there is a proposal being circulated that will require the government to (1) provide some form of wildfire training and support to every fit, able bodied person who lives in a wildfire interface area; (2) require forestry, road construction, contractor and mining companies to identify personnel and equipment that can be used for firefighting and to put them on a standby roster for deployment. The idea being to shift wildfire fighting from a branch of government activity to a whole of community and industry effort. Apparently like it used to be.

Which will result in hundreds of 'injury' claims against the Crown, I'm guessing, just like the 'good old days'

 

[Cloud Cover]

There hundreds of claims per year anyway, and the current system is not working. It’s just not working, and people in Victoria will not admit that and they always raise legal liability to derail the rest of the province. It’s almost as if they want it to burn.

 

[foresterab]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/how-alberta-wildfire-responds-to-increased-winter-fires-1.7108499

For reference crews have been on fires pretty much all winter....and new starts still occurring as shown here:

ArcGIS Dashboards

ArcGIS Dashboards

www.arcgis.com

 

[foresterab]

And then there was this commitment made by the Prime Minister yesterday:

Canada to help Chile battle wildfires

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will be sending firefighting experts and equipment to Chile as the country battles wildfires.

www.ctvnews.ca

No idea what agency was asked or what resources he's referring to as most are still cleaning up from last year/preparing for this season.

 

[Brad Sallows]

David Eby’s concerns...

“The weather that we’re having is so unpredictable and so extreme right now that the economic impacts and the human impacts in our province are much more acute, like we’re the early warning sign for the rest of Canada about what’s coming with climate change,” Eby said Thursday.

"Different than we're used to" isn't "unpredictable".

I've read about times and places where droughts last for 3 to 7 years, so I suppose it can happen here.

 

[Haggis]

David Eby should take some of the carbon tax funds out of general revenue and purchase some modern fire fighting equipment including aircraft.

Seeing helicopters carrying buckets on the huge fires last year does not appear efficient except for specific purposes (spot fires/inaccessible terrain).





2024: ????????

Likely another Election 2025 promise in the making.

Remember, the reason we didn't have a white Christmas in small isolated parts of Canada which are Liberal strongholds was because Trudeau didn't have a majority, allowing him to force his climate agenda farther into peoples wallets.

Western and Northern Canada will burn to the ground unless Trudeau gets his majority in 2025.

 

[Quirky]

Western and Northern Canada will burn to the ground unless Trudeau gets his majority in 2025.

Arsonists will make sure of it.

 

[GR66]

A recent episode of the CBC podcast Quirks and Quarks discussed the significant environmental impact of the 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption. The plume reached a height of 57km...far higher than any other previously recorded and has disrupted the jet stream influencing many of the extreme weather events we've had in the last two years (including to some extent the BC heat waves). It also mentioned that unlike in terrestrial volcanoes the plume of the underwater Tonga eruption consisted primarily of steam from the vapourized sea water which has many times more powerful greenhouse effect than carbon or methane.

How high into the atmosphere did the eruption go?

The eruption itself broke so many records about our understanding about science. When a very large volcano erupts, they usually have clouds that go up to about 25 kilometres high, and when the ash hits the bottom of the stratosphere, the jet stream streaks that material away and kind of wraps it around the world.

This particular eruption was so powerful, NASA actually detected the cloud rising to 57 kilometres high. That's twice as high as the previous known limit of a volcanic eruption. That meant that it had so much power, and so much velocity, it punched through the jet stream of the stratosphere and it pushed ash and basically salt water into the mesosphere.

NASA detected Pacific Ocean water in outer space. No one even thought it was even possible to do because of gravity.

Now, this was indeed a very big volcano with a lot of local destruction, but it didn't have the kind of global impact that a volcano like Krakatoa had in terms of changing the climate.

This [2022 Tonga volcano] has changed the climate. Right now, the climate is still changed because of that. Krakatoa went bang on land, so the mechanism isn't quite the same.

When you have a volcano that erupts above the water, there's a lot of ash that goes into the atmosphere. That creates a barrier that stops solar radiation from hitting the surface of the Earth, and that creates global cooling.

Now this particular volcano, because it was underwater, what was pushed into the atmosphere was mainly steam. And H2O steam is the strongest greenhouse gas there is. So it has heated the planet because there was so much water pushed into the mesosphere, something like 60 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of Pacific Ocean water.

It has [also] affected the jet stream patterns. And the net result is in the Northern hemisphere last summer, your crazy summer that you had, [with] the heat waves and the massive bush fires in Canada, this volcano made it even worse.

 

[OldSolduer]

Western and Northern Canada will burn to the ground unless Trudeau gets his majority in 2025.

So if Toronto was burning......

 

[YZT580]

"Different than we're used to" isn't "unpredictable".

I've read about times and places where droughts last for 3 to 7 years, so I suppose it can happen here.

yeah. You have heard of the dirty 30's I presume.

 

[YZT580]

And then there was this commitment made by the Prime Minister yesterday:

Canada to help Chile battle wildfires

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will be sending firefighting experts and equipment to Chile as the country battles wildfires.

www.ctvnews.ca

No idea what agency was asked or what resources he's referring to as most are still cleaning up from last year/preparing for this season.

who else? Expect Blair to step up to the plate at any moment

 

[MilEME09]

It's probably going to be another bad season, especially as fires that have been burning underground all winter flare up. Instead of prevention etc the provinces will once again call on tbe CAF to save them

 

[daftandbarmy]

It's probably going to be another bad season, especially as fires that have been burning underground all winter flare up. Instead of prevention etc the provinces will once again call on tbe CAF to save them make our GOFOs look good in the face of severe criticism from the Government and other.

There, FTFY

 

[ArmyRick]

Ahem, you mean Wildland ARSON season 2024? Ok, lightning will cause some.