Thousands of people have evacuated their homes across parts of the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where officials have declared a state of emergency and crews are working to contain dozens of out-of-control wildfires.
The smoke has spread to over a third of the United States, with large parts of the Midwest under air quality advisories that have expanded into the Northeast. The National Weather Service issued an air quality alert on Wednesday for New York City and the surrounding areas.
The fires are intensifying, and two people were killed in May after a small town in Manitoba was engulfed in flames. Their deaths were an ominous start to Canada’s wildfire season, which usually runs from March until October.
Where are the wildfires burning?
About 2.3 million acres have burned across both Saskatchewan and Manitoba, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Manitoba’s out-of-control wildfires are burning mainly on its northwest border with Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, the fire activity is also mostly concentrated in the north.
Officials have ordered about 17,000 people to evacuate in Manitoba, and another 15,000 in Saskatchewan. Canadian armed forces, in some cases using helicopters, helped mobilize evacuations across sparsely populated rural regions in Manitoba, home to several First Nations communities.
Another 1.2 million acres of forest have burned in northern Alberta, prompting evacuation orders for about 4,000 people.
Elsewhere in Canada, fire activity has struck the northeast region of British Columbia and northwest Ontario.
Where is the smoke affecting air quality?
In the upper Midwest of the United States, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota have issued air quality warnings as smoke from the Prairie wildfires is dragged south by a cold front. Those warnings expanded into the Northeast, causing some hazy skies.
In 2023, fires from Quebec caused the skies across large parts of New York to turn an apocalyptic orange. So far, the smoke has not drastically affected visibility because much of it floated far above the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere level, according to a meteorologist from the National Weather Service.
Air quality has deteriorated as higher amounts of particulate, like soot, ash and dust, are trapped in the air and blown across thousands of miles.
Officials in Canada and the United States have warned residents in affected areas to modify their outdoor activity, especially for higher risk groups, like children, older adults, pregnant people and those with heart or lung conditions.
What caused the fires?
So far, 100 of Manitoba’s 111 wildfires have been caused by people, government data shows. Six occurred naturally, probably as a result of lightning, and another five are under investigation.
Lightning, which is more common in hotter temperatures, is usually the cause of wildfires that burn the most land. In 2023, scientists at Canada’s natural resources department found that lightning sparked fires that burned 93 percent of the total wildfire area, and the remaining seven percent of the area burned from human causes.
This year, so far, a majority of the wildfires burning in both provinces have been caused by humans, according to officials and government data, but their effect on the total area burned has not yet been determined. It’s unclear how many of those were accidental.
How is Canada responding?
Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, has convened an emergency response group to address the wildfires. The government has also promised to match donations to the Canadian Red Cross, lend military aid and provide other support.
By this time last year, the Canadian government had hosted a wildfire briefing with senior public safety officials to lay out how it was mobilizing for the season, including funding plans to support international crews, train Indigenous firefighters and buy equipment.
Will the wildfires get worse?
Strong winds and a lack of rain in the forecast mean conditions are likely to get worse over the coming days, meteorologists warn. Nighttime typically provides a reprieve, as temperatures fall, but the overnight weather has remained hot and unrelenting.
Climate change, researchers have found, is exacerbating those conditions.
Both provinces have seen intense, above-average heat this spring. That, combined with a stationary high-pressure system in central Canada, which causes air to sink downward and dry out, has primed conditions, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.
Experts say June is critical for wildfire forecasting because that is when Western Canada tends to see the most of its summer rainfall, which could partially determine the course of the rest of wildfire season.
Eight firefighters were killed in 2023, Canada’s worst wildfire season on record, but there were no civilian deaths. That year, 7,100 wildfires burned 37 million acres, an area larger than the size of England, according to the Canadian government. Scientists later called the wildfires the top carbon emitter of 2023.
Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Toronto, where she covers news from across Canada.
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