Canadian Wildfire Season Mercifully Ends After Unprecedented Burn Year

Chart shows the monthly trend line in acreage burned in
Canadian wildfires. Pink line is 2023. All the
other lines are yearly fire activity since 2000,

 Winter has pretty much set in for most of Canada, so after so many months of conflagrations, the nation isn't burning anymore.  

You've noticed the change here in Vermont. This November, whenever the wind shifts into the north, we don't get wildfire smoke anymore. That's definitely a change from what we experienced from May to early October.  And it's fortunate, since winds have been from the north and northwest most of this month. 

The Canadian fire stats are pretty wild, per the Washington Post:

"About 45.7 million acres have burned in 2023, surpassing the previous high of 17.5 million acres based on records dating back to 1983, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center." 

The total acreage burned is about the same as the annual totals from 2015 to 2022 combined. If all the burned land was combined, it would entirely cover North Dakota, with about 200,000 additional acres in say, South Dakota.

Obviously, Canada is a huge nation. As such, you'd normally expect in any given year that parts of Canada might be hot and dry, while others would be cool and wet. Somehow, almost all of Canada managed to be hot and dry by their standards for much of the year. 

On the west coast, British Columbia saw 7 million acres burn this year, which is more than double the previous record. In eastern Canada, 12.8 acres burned in Quebec, also double the previous record for that province. 

In small sized Nova Scotia, 62,000 acres burned, which was six times the old record.

Some of the fire-ravaged areas also experienced extreme weather whiplash.  Parts of Nova Scotia were devastated by fires in May. Those same areas endured severe flooding in July and August. 

Traffic makes its way along Interstate 89
in Georgia, Vermont on June 25 through smoke and haze from
Canadian wildfires. Canada had by far its worst 
fire season on record. 

It's hard to say whether fires are a steeply accelerating crisis in Canada. We know that trend in wildfires has been increasing in the (former) Great White North, as the nation has turned warmer and sometimes drier with climate change. 

However, 2023 was simply unimaginable, until it happened.

I have to wonder whether 2024 will be a bad year, too.  El Nino is in full force, which tends to make Canada as a whole warmer and drier than usual. Combined with climate change, it could be another bad year. 

Another bad fire year in Canada would of course be bad for the United States, too.  Vast areas of the continental U.S. choked on repeated smoke and pollution episodes from those Canadian fires. That surely had health effects for millions of people. 

Thankfully, right now, most of Canada is snow covered, and will remain that way through at least March and much of April, 2024.  The first fires of the season in Canada usually start in May and taper off in September.