Alberta’s 2024 Wildfire Season Poised to Rival 2023’s Historic Fires, Experts Say

In preparation for the start of the wildfire season in Alberta, Canada, CTV News Edmonton (1-3-24) interviewed Environment and Climate Change Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips about the pending start of the wildfire season in Alberta.

2024 has started with dozens of fires from Alberta’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season still burning, and with dry conditions so far this fall and winter, experts say the province could experience another wildfire season just like it. In 2023, the province saw 2.2 million hectares burn, the most since 1.3 million hectares went up in smoke in 1981.

This year’s wildfire season in Alberta is shaping to be a repeat, Phillips told CTV. “The vast majority” of the province has seen less than 80% of the precipitation it would normally expect over the last 90 days. “That’s the recharge season. That’s when you want to get the soil moisture full, you want to get the forest litter wet,” he said. “(Last year), we had some of the coldest March and April on record on the Prairies, and then in May and June, you went from as I say from slosh to sweat… There was no in-between kind of season where you could cut ease into it.”

“Spring lasted two days, and it was that dramatic swing that caused the fires to get going and you couldn’t put them out [because] there was no moisture there,” Phillips told CTV.

Mellissa Story, public information officer for Alberta Wildfire, also told CTV that Alberta will be entering the 2024 wildfire season with an elevated wildfire risk, “especially in the northern part of the province,” adding that 63 fires are continuing to burn from last year.

“Most of them are in the northern parts and most of them are the ones that were of significant size in 2023,” she added. “It’s not unusual for us to have carry over wildfires—we typically get a handful of them every year—but 63 is a lot for us to monitor, so we want to make sure that people are doing their part to prevent wildfires and make sure that we’re not starting any new ones early in the spring.”

Alberta Wildfire will have crews in place by April 15th, earlier than usual to deal with whatever the season holds, CTV reported. Snow and a lot of spring rain are what’s needed to prevent a repeat of last year.