Canada’s Wildfires Are Burning Through the Night
As overnight temperatures climb across Canada, fires that once spread more slowly after dark are burning around the clock, straining fire crews.
Vjosa Isai reported from Toronto. Amy Graff is a reporter on The Times’s weather team.
Under cover of night is when firefighters perform some of the most essential work of starving a wildfire. They can lay out sprinklers, directly attack smaller fires and run heavy equipment with less risk that it will overheat.
But Canadian firefighters are observing a trend of high overnight temperatures that have brought on a new hardship: the 24-hour fire cycle.
“It is relentless,” said Randy Schroeder, a fire chief in the western province of Alberta. “The fires grow and last a lot longer than they would have normally done in the same fuel, in the same period of time, years ago.”
Ordinarily, when temperatures drop and humidity rises after dark, fires burn less intensely and spread more slowly, giving firefighters a window to control flames, as well as time to rest before fire activity picks back up the next day.
