‘It burns wild and free up there’: Canada fires force US crews to shift strategy
If nothing else, this artcile has an amazing graph showing how much worse this year is.
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Comments24https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/canada-wildfires-us-crews-shift-strategyOpen linkView original on lemmy.ca
Graph, for posterity.
So we're already close to double the record, and it only just now reaching the time of year where fires normally start.
The last 20 years.
Well, we're just reaching the point where fires are most common. The graph also starts in May and the middle is July.
It's definitely worse than it's ever been... but it's not exactly out of season, either.
That graph is bonkers. It's not like we haven't hard barn burners of a fire season before this year, so near doubling the previous high by June is staggering.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph
The math checks out on the shape of stats
Interesting, will look into it.
Freaking crazy, next year might be better...nothing left to burn.
According to https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/forests/state-canadas-forests-report/how-much-forest-does-canada-have/17601 -- we have 362 million hectares of forest.
We've burned 7.75/362 this year, or just over 2%. If I was a gambling man, I'd wager we reach 3% of our forest burned this year.
However, that leaves a bunch for next year yet...
3%, just craziness!
Unfortunately, there's a whole lot more to burn
Forest fires aren't a bad thing. There's also evidence that over-zealous fire fighting causes worse fires in the long term as well.
Controlled burns to manage debris are fine. The problem is that houses and development have been built in fire zones and make fire fighting more difficult.
Controlled burns to manage debris are fine. The problem is that houses and development have been built in fire zones and make fire fighting more difficult.
This is genuinely scary. The air has been smoky for weeks and the fire season has barely started.
Is this likely to be a particularly bad year because of El Nino weather patterns? (I think its an El Nino year?)
Either way, shockingly bad so far. Anecdotally I work for a company with employees in several US states and people have been impacted all over the north/east. Kids home from school due to bad air, allergies, headaches if they go outside too much, etc.
Who's signing up to plant trees next spring?
Another expert I saw mentioned that their predictions of the worst-case stuff for the future is that it will be twice as bad compared to now. A lot of lives and houses, infrastructure, etc. can be lost when live in a reality where our fire fighting has to pick and choose which cities and livelihoods we save.
I'm an optimist. Just like Winnipeg figured out how to manage floods, I think we'll figure out how to manage even the worst case scenario forest fires. And some of that will be simply (and sometimes annoying) things like mandating firebreaks in rings around populated centres. So we'll look like targets to the space aliens, err, satellites.
Anyone who hasn't seen it should definitely watch Only the Brave (2017). It's a really impactful movie.
Hey you guys. Stop letting your smoke across the border! Thanks. -A disgruntled Michigander
This is genuinely scary. The air has been smoky for weeks and the fire season has barely started.
This is genuinely scary. The air has been smoky for weeks and the fire season has barely started.