Western Canadian Wildfire Season Starts Early Due To Mild, Dry Winter & Zombie Fires
El Niño conditions, dry winter follow Canada's hottest summer on record, plus "zombie fires" are raising concerns that 2024 could be another record-breaking wildfire year.
On Tuesday the western Canadian province of Alberta declared an early start to wildfire season, ten days earlier than ususal, as a result of an unusually dry and mild winter, which opens the door for the government to dedicate more money and resources towards fighting the wildfires.
Canada suffered through its worst wildfire season on record last year when 18.5 million hectares (45.7 million acres) burned, seven times higher than the 10-year average, according to the Canadian federal government.
Alberta is also suffering from sustained drought, and 52 wildfires continue burning in the province from last year, as well as 17 new fires so far in 2024.
Wildfire season in Alberta usually peaks in the spring and typically starts around March 1 every year. The province declared an early start this year to better direct resources to those fires already underway, the provincial government said in a news release.
“Alberta is experiencing warmer than normal temperatures and below average precipitation in many areas of the province, leading to heightened wildfire risk,” the provincial government said.
The official start of the season allows Alberta Wildfire to use additional tools like fire bans and other restrictions to help manage risk.
The province is also planning to hire an extra 100 firefighters this year, which would add five new 20-person crews.
Last year, Canada’s roughly 5,500 firefighters were bolstered by hundreds of international firefighters flown in to help tackle the blazes.
In August of last year, the City of Yellowknife declared a state of emergency for the local area due to wildfires surrounding the city. The city was evacuated as high winds created fast-moving wildfires, air quality became dangerous, and communication infrastructure in the region became disfigured, making emergency response more complicated.
There are still 92 active fires in British Columbia and another 54 in Alberta that are still burning from last year, according to the latest figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Other overwintering fires are also still active in the Northwest Territories, wildland fire experts said.
Fires that smolder below the surface in winter are sometimes referred to as “zombie fires” or “overwintering fires.”
Often, they are only visible to the naked eye as small plumes of smoke that billow into the winter sky can be seen.
“It still feels like we haven’t had enough time to get recovered, let alone get ready, because here we go again,” Sonja Leverkus told CBC News, a wildland firefighter crew leader who lives in Fort Nelson, B.C.
One of them is about 40 kilometers from Fort Nelson, she told CBC.
“A lot of people talk about fire season and the end of the fire season, but our fires did not stop burning in 2023,” said Leverkus, who is also an adjunct professor researching wildfire at the University of Alberta.
“Our fires dug underground and have been burning pretty much all winter.” she told CBC.
Research published by the scientific journal Nature suggests such fires are becoming more common as the climate heats up. The hot, dry conditions that lead to strong wildfires during the summer can lead to deep burning in carbon-rich soils like peat.
In such cases, a fire can simmer underground for days, weeks or even months after the flames subside, according to the research.
Last summer’s record-setting wildfire season, coupled with the drought-like conditions that persist in parts of British Columbia and Alberta, have made the situation this winter more worrisome, said Mike Flannigan, a wildfire expert and professor at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.
Over the summer, some fires grew so large they are nearly impossible to eliminate during the winter months, Flannigan says. The Donnie Creek fire in northeastern B.C., was notorious for becoming larger than the landmass of Prince Edward Island.
Jennifer Baltzer, a professor in the department of biology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, who researches overwintering wildfires, says the spike in overwintering fires in Western Canada is highly unusual.
“It’s not something I've seen in any of the data sets,” Baltzer told CBC News. “What we don't know is how many of these will actually translate to re-ignition in the spring.”
The conditions in the coming months will go a long way in determining whether this will lead to another early start and major year for wildfires.
“It depends on the day-to-day weather that we’ll see in the spring,” Flannigan said.
In a recent bulletin, the B.C. Wildfire Service said it is monitoring fires in the province, saying it has “protocols in place to patrol large fires when weather conditions could allow holdover fires to show themselves.”
“Personnel are currently monitoring existing fires as conditions allow and are establishing response priorities,” the statement said.
Alberta is Canada’s primary oil and gas-producing province and output has been severely disrupted in previous bad wildfire years such as 2016, when large parts of the oil tar sands hub of Fort McMurray was destroyed by wildfire flames.
Quebec, which experienced a record-setting wildfire season last year, does not have any reported active fires. A spokesperson for the province’s wildfire agency, said overwintering fires are rare in Quebec.
Going forward, Baltzer told CBC News that fire management authorities will need to more closely monitor overwinter fires, given the likelihood they will become more common and reignite in spring.
“This is yet another indication of the impact of climate warming on these systems,” she said.
While her crew is off for the winter, Leverkus said many are already preparing their gear and giving training sessions for the spring season, which she anticipates will start earlier than usual.
The scale and magnitude of the wildfires have definitively changed the western Canadian boreal ecosystems.
“I would say we’ve crossed a tipping point. This summer across Canada has been absolutely astounding in terms of wildfire,” said Lori Daniels, a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia, as reported by CBC.
“These are the types of fires that I think will be ecosystem changing. It will take decades to centuries for those ecosystems to recover, if they recover, given the confounding influence of climate change.”