After a long season of big snowfalls and flooding, wildfire season has come to Saskatchewan with six active fires as of the morning of May 27.
“You’ve got all that deadfall from winter, all the dead brown grass, all of the things that have gone on that haven’t really greened up yet. So that makes it really quite flammable until things start to really green up,” says Aaron Buckingham, president of the Saskatchewan Volunteer Firefighter Association.
He says humidity levels are an issue.
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“What we look for is something that we call crossover… what that means is it’s 27 degrees here, and the relative humidity is 27 per cent. What happens in crossover is if the daily temperature is 27 and the relatively humidity drops down below 27, say 20, 18, that’s when fire is at its most volatile state where a spark can just happen.”
Although it’s currently dry, this year has been a mixed bag of moisture with snow still on the ground in some parts of the province.
Even Prince Albert National Park, which experienced major snow and some flooding, now has a fire ban in place, and some volunteer fire departments are already seeing some action.
“We’ve had two grass fires,” said Les Kroeger, Hanley Rosedale Fire Department Fire Chief. “One, it got out of hand and out of control very, very quickly. That was before we had seen any moisture come along. And then more recently, we had one, it was caused by a vehicle fire on the highway.”
Buckingham says this year seems to be off to a slower start, but it could spark up at any time.
“The forecast does indicate favourable conditions for things to happen again. I hope not to the scale we had last year.”
Watch above for more on the start of Saskatchewan’s wildfire season.
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