Western fires rage, smoke plumes may visit Minnesota

It's been an active fire season in the western Canadian Rockies. Several hundred wildfires have been belching massive smoke plumes skyward, and Minnesota may again see smoke aloft in northwest flow this week.

Here's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest smoke mapper, which shows significant smoke upstream over Canada.

British Columbia and the Northwest Territories have seen the most intense blazes this summer. Here's the rundown from Natural Resources Canada.

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Interagency mobilization

The National Preparedness Level is at 4 this week. Resource mobilization is above average, with competition for national resources. The agency preparedness level for British Columbia and Alberta increased to 4, the Northwest Territories and Parks Canada decreased to 3, while all other provinces and territories are a level 1 or 2.

Agencies are using – 6 aircraft, 813 personnel, 400 power pumps and 67 km of hose along with a variety of other equipment. Lightning activity accounted for 60% of this week’s fires. The United States is at preparedness level 3, with large fires burning in Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and Washington.

Weekly Synopsis

There have been 242 new fires and 222,238 ha burned this week. The weekly fire occurrence increased to above average for the first time this year, due to increased activity in British Columbia. The area burned in Western and Northern regions of Canada this week is above average, while the area burned in most regions of Central and Eastern Canada is below average for this time of year.

The majority of this week’s fires occurred in British Columbia, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories (37%, 19%, and 17% respectively), while the majority of the area burned was in British Columbia, Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan (58%, 22%, and 16% respectively). Seasonal fire occurrence and area burned both remain below the 10-year average nationally.

Several large fires are also burning in the western United States.

Western fires increase, costs soar

One effect of a warmer drier climate shift in the west? The number of large fires in the west has grown dramatically in recent decades.

The cost of fighting these is also increasing dramatically. That's another hidden climate change tax we may all already be paying as the American West shifts to a hotter, drier climate.

Here's a clip from USA today on how fires are straining budgets.

The costs of fighting wildfires are rising dramatically, and could keep climbing in the face of climate change that's contributing to longer fire seasons out West and the spread of housing developments near forests, a science group warned Wednesday.

"The annual suppression cost has exceeded $1 billion in each year since 2000," said Rachel Cleetus, senior climate economist with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) during a phone conference with reporters Wednesday.

But the actual damage costs — when including lost tourism revenue, the harm caused to public health and expenses related to watershed damage — can dwarf firefighting costs, she added.

The report comes as the largest wildfire in Washington-state history continues to blaze, and a total of 26 fires are burning almost a million acres in the western U.S. Nationally, wildfires have burned less than half the 10-year average so far this summer.

The report noted that since 1985, fire-suppression costs have increased nearly fourfold from $440 million (in 2012 dollars) to more than $1.7 billion in 2013.

Additionally, climate change is a dominant driver of the fires in the West, according to Jason Funk, a UCS climate scientist. "Temperatures have risen in the West by 2 degrees since 1970, and there's been a big change in length of wildfire season, which has risen from five months to seven months," he said.

He also said the average number of big western fires has risen from about 140 per year in the 1980s to 250 in the 2000s.