Hot, dry weather for B.C. ahead; warnings come of bad wildfire season

smoke flames are seen in this photo of the donnie creek wildfire burning in bc — File -- The Donnie Creek wildfire (G80280) burns in an area between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John, B.C. in this undated handout photo. Underlying drought, unseasonably warm temperatures last month and hot, dry conditions in the June forecast mean "the table has been set" for significant wildfire activity this summer, an official with the British Columbia Wildfire Service says. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, BC Wildfire Service

Posted June 5, 2023 7:17 am.

Last Updated June 5, 2023 7:18 am.

With hot, dry weather ahead, some forecasters say our forests are primed for ignition, and there are new warnings of a potentially bad wildfire season ahead.

Three new fires started in the region over the weekend as temperatures are also expected to soar again this week in Metro Vancouver.

“The last significant rainfall was now a month ago — on May 5th — and that was the only real rain we saw through an incredibly parched month of May. That trend has continued into June,” said CityNews Meteorologist Michael Kuss.

“There’s a chance for rain this Friday into Saturday but over the next potentially 14 days, that might be about it.”

Kuss says over the past week, the forest fire danger rating for the Lower Mainland has risen from moderate to high, and with hot dry conditions expected over the next four to five days, we could see the rating go to extreme.

“You can already see it all around us — the lawns are browning up around the city and it’s only the start of June. The big story is how hot it is going to get with temperatures likely pushing 30 degrees across parts of the Lower Mainland.”

It is the same story for much of the rest of the province, with large swaths of B.C. at a high to extreme wildfire rating and the season well underway in the central and northeastern regions.

The top fire-weather forecaster for the BC Wildfire Service says the unseasonably warm, dry spring combined with continued, underlying drought means we all need to be careful in the weeks and months ahead.

“We’re really trying to encourage people to be extremely cautious heading into the fire season because the table is really set for what’s likely to be an active fire season,” said Matt MacDonald, who explains there are different types of drought and they don’t always occur at the same time.

He says this year is “one of the rare occurrences where all the droughts, no matter how you define them, be it rivers, soil moisture, or the fuels, the forests, are all very clearly indicating elevated drought.”

Right now, pockets of drought extend from the Cariboo region west of the Fraser River, around 100 Mile House to Prince George, over to the Smithers area, and the Peace Region to the east, where B.C.’s most significant fires are currently burning.

While the worst of the wildfire season so far has been in northeastern B.C., three fires were discovered in the eastern Fraser Valley region over the weekend.

As of Monday morning, the Coastal Fire Centre listed two small fires under investigation north and west of Agassiz near Harrison Lake and the Chehalis River, and another 30-hectare fire, likely human-caused, further up the Chehalis River. All were classified as out of control.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to provide an update on the wildfires that have forced thousands of people from their homes and caused widespread property damage in several provinces.

Trudeau will appear in Ottawa on Monday alongside a number of ministers, including Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.

–With files from The Canadian Press

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