08 July 2015

Canada Is Burning As Usual, But Worse


Across Canada, there are more than 418 wildfires burning. To date, there have been more than 4,500 that have charred more than 2,150,000 hectares of forest. There are twice the number of fires that there were at this time last year when just over 2,200 fires burned 515,732 hectares of forest.
From here.

How much is 2,150,000 hectares?  That's 5,313,000 acres or so, which is equivalent to 8,301 square miles which is larger than Connecticut and Delaware combined.

The result is haze in the Eastern U.S. (including Denver) and a lot of burned out land in Canada. Most of the places where the wildfires are largest aren't heavily populated, and there have apparently not been many serious injuries or deaths or even massive property damage.  But, forests take a long time to recover from these events as we know all too well in Colorado.

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