Alberta , Canada , has had, and is having a very serious wildfire season.
Today, there are about 130 fires burning and about 30 of them out of control.
We've had hot dry windy weather which makes great conditions for the fires to burn and very hard to fight the fires. The wild fires are large and very fast moving. The fires are more intense than in previous years.
These fires have started earlier in the season than usual. The spring fire season is usually short if we have lots of winter snow and a wet spring. Then the vegetation leafs out and is hard to burn.
The nearest fire is about 150 km from me. Many people have had to leave towns and farms.
The area is mixed with heavy forest, ranching, farming and undeveloped poor land. It seems like the fire likes these areas and can rip through it very quickly.
We were not bothered with smoke until two days ago. The fire has been burning for three weeks but the smoke has moved across Canada to Ontario and then south. My daughter, who lives in the Chicago area reports that they have smoke from the fires and that we have made the news there.
It seems that the government is very slow to bring in extra equipment and crews to fight the fire.
All we can hope for is some substantial rain.
