UPDATE: Rain provides short-term help to wildfire risk

The recent rain in parts of British Columbia has helped subdue the wildfire threat, but officials say it will likely just be a short-term impact.

“We were very grateful for the rain we saw over the last several days, but from what I understand, it was not enough to alleviate our concerns,” Bowinn Ma, minister of emergency management, told a provincial wildfire update Wednesday (June 14).

Cliff Chapman, director of operations with the BC Wildfire Service, said the rain in the southern half of the province has been welcomed.

“But the challenge is that we need sustained rainfall, really through the month of June and ideally as we start to trend into July and August, as well. We have not seen sustained rainfall in this province really since we went snow free,” Chapman explained.

Chapman said the over-winter drought and warm spring weather, have created “tricky” conditions for fires.

“We need sustained rainfall over the course of a week to ten days, and that’s just not in the forecast.”

He cautioned the rain that is forecast, could also come with thunderstorms.

“And at this time, the smoke that has blown into the south and will continue to sit over us for the next couple of days, it’s very challenging to detect fires when you have smoke and cloud.”

The Okanagan is starting to see an increase of wildfire smoke, with forecasts showing smoke from northern B.C. tracking south through central and eastern B.C. Wednesday and Thursday.

Chapman added given the current conditions, it won’t take much warming before the fire risk rises again.

“We’ll be fortunate to see 10 to 20 mm of rain at any given weather station over the next ten days. That will help, but it won’t be enough to knock down the hazards as we enter into July and August.”

Bruce Ralston, forests minister, said there are currently 86 fires burning in B.C., with 13 detected in the last 24 hours. Six of the fires are in the Kamloops Fire Centre which includes the Okanagan.

He said, since April 1, 433 fires have charred 762,000 hectares.

“The 20 year average for this time of year is 306 wildfires and 18,000 hectares. The vast majority of these hectares have burned within the northeast region of the province where we continue to respond to our largest incidents,” Ralston told the media.

An incident management team with 20 personnel from the U.S. is expected to arrive this weekend to help with B.C.’s firefighting efforts.

“We will put them onto one of our priority fires and it will give us a chance to rest one of our incident management teams which are all going into their second or third tour of duty which is abnormal relative to many other years,” Chapman said.

More than 2,750 B.C. residents are under evacuation orders due to wildfires in the Peace River Regional District, the District of Tumbler Ridge and the Northern Rockies Regional municipality.