A Breath of Smoky Air: Reflecting on Alberta's Wildfire Season, and What Lies Ahead

Well, here we are again, staring down the unofficial close of Alberta's wildfire season. It’s October 31st, a date that usually signals a sigh of relief for many, yet it always leaves us, honestly, pondering the immense scale of what we’ve just lived through. You see, while the official word is that the season runs from March 1 to Halloween, the effects, the sheer memory of the smoke-filled skies, they linger far longer, don't they?

This year, the numbers tell a story — a significant one, for sure. We've tallied 1,111 wildfires across the province. Now, that's a lot of fires, but what's perhaps more striking is the land consumed: just over half a million hectares, or 544,930 to be exact. And for context, especially if you remember last year’s devastating saga, that’s substantially less than the staggering 2.2 million hectares we saw burn in 2023. A small mercy, perhaps, but a mercy nonetheless, especially for those on the front lines and in communities directly impacted.

But let's be frank: the battle was far from easy. The season kicked off with a kind of brutal earnestness, didn’t it? Those dry conditions, a persistent echo from the previous year, meant we were already playing catch-up, trying to keep a lid on things even as the spring sun promised warmth but delivered, in truth, an escalating fire risk. It always feels like a race against time, doesn't it, when nature decides to turn up the heat?

And here's a thought, one that always gnaws a bit: a good chunk of these fires, roughly 70 percent, well, they weren't acts of lightning, but rather, they were human-caused. That figure, if you really stop to think about it, truly puts the onus on us, doesn't it? Our activities, our decisions — even the seemingly small ones — can have such an immense, devastating ripple effect across vast swathes of our beautiful province. It's a reminder, perhaps a stark one, that prevention really is the first and best defense.

Looking ahead, because we always must, the forecast, frankly, isn’t entirely comforting. El Niño, that familiar weather pattern, is expected to usher in a warmer, drier winter. And what does that mean? It means the fuel for next year’s fires could already be drying out, even as the snow begins to fall. So, while we can take a momentary collective breath as the official season closes, the vigilance, the preparation, the very human act of protecting our shared wild spaces — that work, in truth, never really ends. It just shifts, like the wind before a storm.