rain

By Ashley Legassic

WILDFIRE SEASON

Wet weather this summer has helped suppress wildfire behaviour in Kamloops region

Jul 16, 2019 | 7:10 AM

KAMLOOPS — So far this year in the Kamloops Fire Centre, far less hectares of land have been burned and it’s thanks in part to more precipitation.

Kamloops Fire Centre information officer Nicole Bonnett says to date in the region, there have been 95 fires with a total of 995 hectares burned.

“The 2017 fire season we had fewer fires than we had in 2018, but we had the… Elephant Hill fire from 2017, which contributed to quite a few hectares within the Kamloops Fire Centre,” she says, “and then for the 2018 fire season we saw quite a bit of lightning that came with minimal to no precipitation so that also resulted in quite a few of the fires last year.”

Bonnett says at this time last year, there were 136 fires to date and 4,402 hectares had been burned. In 2017 it was 107 fires to date with a total of 48,585 hectares burned.

“Because we’ve seen a fair amount of precipitation so far this year, it’s definitely put quite a bit of moisture back into the ground,” Bonnett says. “With some of the cooler temperatures it takes things quite a bit longer to dry out, and I think we’ve seen less lightning this year than we did last year.”

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Bonnett adds that although Category 2 and Category 3 burning bans are still in effect, campfires are still allowed in the region as long as they are a half metre high by a half metre wide.

Environment Canada forecaster Bobby Sekhon says we’ll be seeing more cool, wet weather this week.

“We’re pretty much bang-on normal (for precipitation) for this time of year,” he says. “So far this year we’ve received about 15 millimetres of precipitation in Kamloops, the monthly average for July is 31 millimetres, so this week we could add another 10 millimetres or so to that total and we’ll be pretty close to the average then.

“Even though it was a dry June and a dry spring, we’re catching up now in July.”