Canada is already having another bad wildfire season

It’s looking like another disastrous wildfire season across Canada. As of the last weekend of May, news outlets are reporting that the country was battling around 175 wildfires, with nearly 100 of them that were uncontained. With the official start of the summer season next month, officials are already stating that worsening conditions may be seen in the near future.

The hardest-hit provinces with wildfires in Canada are Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Forced evacuations of residents are over 20,000, with the highest in Manitoba. Over 17,000 residents had to flee their homes due to the out-of-control blazes, which is one of the largest evacuations in the country’s history. The premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan issued a “provincial emergency” last week.

The blazes are so large that the smoke is filtering southward into the north-central U.S. Over the weekend, approximately 22 million people in the states of Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and Illinois were under air quality alerts. Thick smoke was possible in some of the major cities, like Green Bay and Chicago. The smoke could reach as far east as Washington, D.C., and as far west as eastern Montana.

Approximately half a million acres of land have been burned in Canada so far this year. Oil production in Alberta has been disrupted due to the large blazes. Conditions in these provinces have been warmer and drier than normal, which has helped to worsen the wildfires.

According to the Government of Canada, the worst fire season was in 2023. Over 39.5 million acres were burned as out-of-control wildfires in Canada’s eastern province of Quebec sent huge clouds of smoke and haze southward into the northeastern U.S., parts of the Midwest and regions as far south as the Mid-Atlantic states.

During that year, the smoke from the Canadian fires was so thick that the skyline of New York City was completely orange in color. Major sporting events were either postponed or canceled, and schools were closed across parts of the Northeast. Major airlines also delayed flights due to the heavy smoke. Smoke particles from those blazes were even reported across Greenland, Iceland and parts of western Europe.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the chances for significant wildland fires across eastern Washington and North Idaho increase in June. In July, most of the northwestern U.S., except for the coastal areas of Oregon and northern California, will have a higher-than-normal risk of fires. This area expands eastward into the western portions of North and South Dakota in August.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, seasonal forecasts for the northwestern part of the country are indicating a warmer and drier-than-normal weather pattern for the upcoming summer season. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there have been close to 28,000 fires that have burned over 1.1 million acres to date in 2025. The 10-year average to date is also 1.1 million acres.

So far, the air quality in our region has been good. According to a “State of the Air” report from the American Lung Association, our area has averaged over 250 days a year with very good air quality. However, we do get long stretches with dry and stagnant conditions that increase the levels of bad air. The smoke from the large wildfires has been the primary reason for the poor air quality in our region.

In terms of our local weather, May turned out to be a very dry month across the Inland Northwest. Only 0.44 inches of rain fell at Cliff’s station last month, with 0.94 inches at the Spokane International Airport. Coeur d’Alene’s seasonal total to date is 8.15 inches, which is close to 4 inches below average. Last year at this time, there were 11.66 inches.

The weather pattern across the region over the last several months has been dominated by a strong ridge of high pressure. As the storms move in from the Pacific, they are weakened considerably as they move into the ridge, and as a result, our supply of moisture is severely reduced.

There is a chance that we could see some moisture around the middle of June, but the latest long-range forecast models are indicating that the high-pressure ridge is expected to hold on, so moisture totals are not anticipated to be that impressive.

Over the last 20 years, many of our summer seasons across North Idaho have been drier than normal. The summer of 2024 only had 1.59 inches of moisture in Coeur d’Alene. We’re not expecting this season to be as dry, but moisture totals for May did turn out to be lower than originally anticipated. Therefore, we’ll have to wait and see what happens with the big ridge in the next four to six weeks. Based on our long-term cycles, there is a good chance we’ll have wetter weather in the late summer or early fall. Stay tuned.

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Contact Randy Mann at randy@longrangeweather.com.