I’m up near Sudbury Ontario and our forests don’t look so bad yet … but everyone here knows and is aware of how much snow we got this winter and it wasn’t much. We are not having as much spring runoff as we did years before. It all means that our forests will dry out in a month or two and by then, the hot summer weather will be here and ignite everything.

We’re not looking forward to the summer.

Enjoy it while you can. I think we’ll be breathing in a lot smoke in a month or two.

New year, same as the old year.

Time to stock up on air purifier filters…

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While British Columbia and Alberta experienced favourable spring conditions that led to fewer wildfires and evacuations, officials warned the situation could change rapidly.

Julienne Morissette, director of wildland policy research and operations at Natural Resources Canada, said the wildfire situation nationally is at “normal levels for this time of year.”

Morissette said spring is a critical period for fire activity, particularly in the boreal forest, where tree species like aspen, poplar and birch are more vulnerable to ignition because they haven’t fully sprouted leaves.

“Unfortunately, this forecasting continues what has become an alarming but somewhat predictable trend of hot, dry summers that present the perfect conditions for intense wildfires,” said Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said that while wildfires have always occurred in the summer, “what is new is their frequency and their intensity, and the science is clear the root cause of this fact is … human-caused climate change.”

Assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclude unequivocally that human activities have caused the planet to warm.

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