A quick update of where we are in BC, at mid-point of summer. Short summary: much better than Ontario and way better than anticipated thus far.
Unusually, so far, the wildfire stats are remarkably low, and orders of magnitude below the 20 year average!!!
The central and southern interior are bone dry, with many or most regions in serious or extreme drought. There is near zero precipitation forecasted until the fall. In North Okanagan the City of Vernon and Coldstream area are running dry, with nearly all agricultural water use suspended, and severe water restrictions on the population. Closer to Salmon Arm and Revelstoke we are at our 11th consecutive day of +30C and the RH has not topped 40. That means dirt is turning to dust, and water irrigation simply burns on vegetative stock and leaf. A wildfire would be catastrophic.
On the other hand, the Cariboo region and in particular the Quesnel locality is quite wet which is very unusual for July.
That being said almost all of the wildfires in the BC so far are human caused and usually by accident. So despite the dry conditions, the effort to keep things under control by community members is really quite something to celebrate.
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