Alberta burns
The climate emergency in progress:
The province of Alberta, Canada, home to more than four million people, is under a state of emergency, as nearly 100 wildfires burn, dozens of them out of control. Since the first local state of emergency was declared on 4 May, over 782,000 hectares of land –
1.9 million American football fieldsor more than 3,000 square miles – have burned, local officials said.Thousands of firefighters and support staff from across Canada and the US have descended upon the area to fight the ceaseless flames. Still, there are 93 active wildfires in Alberta as of 12:00 EST (17:00 BST) on Friday, and experts say the end is nowhere in sight.
Wild fires are common in Alberta in spring but this year’s weather – aka global warming – has made them especially catastrophic.
By 16 May, 19,576 people had been forced to evacuate their homes in Alberta, officials said. Since then, the number of evacuees has dropped to 10,523.
“We are only in mid-May,” said Josee St-Onge, an information officer with Alberta Wildfire. “Our wildfire season usually goes until the fall.”
The 782,000 hectares that have already burned are nearly seven times higher than the five-year average for the same period, she said, which is 123,000 hectares.
See this is the climate catastrophe. It’s not a sign or warning or precursor of it, it’s the thing itself. It’s bad.
Fun facts: A hectare is about 2.471 acres, and a square mile is exactly 640 acres.
Since most of the world uses the metric system now, let’s assume most Americans are people who can conceptualize a football field but not an acre, much less a hectare. Thanks Beeb. Try soccer fields next time, you’ll reach more people.
I don’t really know the size of a football field. Like how many pool tables or pinball machines are we talking here, size-wise? They need to be more inclusive of us non-athletes.
Breathing is not easy here.
I think they should give us the size in Penguin paperbacks.
And 19,576 evacuations, or 456 Trump private jet loads for you ‘Muricans.
Pickleball courts! How many pickleball courts?
4 827 160 493.8 tatami
The fires are all well to the north of me in Calgary, but the smoke was very thick when the wind was from the north.
Been there. Last October there was a wildfire in the Cascades, well to the east of Seattle, and the smoke was very thick when the wind was from the east…which it was for about a week. This is life now. It’s life in Greece, Spain, Italy, all of western Europe, California…etc…
We were getting smoke on Thursday when the wind was from the north; I’m still having trouble breathing because it flared up my asthma.
Ironically, Alberta is sometimes called the Texas of Canada: its main oil producing region with a fossil fuel friendly political climate.
Australia lies to the west of NZ, so when Aussie has bushfires, we get smoke. Back in the 80’s I recall some ‘large’ bushfires that resulted in NZ getting a week or so of lovely red sunsets. In 2009 I was flying over the South Island a few days after the worst of the bushfires there. At 14,000 feet you could not see the ground. On New Years day 2020, in Omarama, the air was thick with the smell of burning, people with poor lungs were struggling, and I couldn’t see a mountain less than 3km away. The fires in Australia were nearly 2000km away.
this year NZ is being hammered by one wet weather system after another. Flooding has been wide spread and repeated in the North Island and upper South Island. Even where I live in the lower South Island the weather has been wetter and warmer than usual thanks to the tail end of these weather systems. People in at least two regions have drowned. Damage has been huge.
Shit is most certainly getting real as they say.
It’s raining!
and hailing