Warm weather impacting outdoor festival, animals, wildfire risk

The warm winter streak continues, and the heat is impacting some plans and causing some concerning trends in Calgary and other parts of southern Alberta.

The warm winter streak continues in southern Alberta with a sunny spring-like day impacting some plans and causing some concerning trends.

Outdoor winter festival Chinook Blast cancelled its Friday skate on the Eau Claire lagoon due to the soft watery ice, but there will still be art installations and live musical and circus performances for families to enjoy for free.

Organizer are used to adjusting programming according to the forecast.

Last year was so frigid some events moved indoors. Now, this year, it’s too warm to host some events outside.

“This ranks right up there as one of our warmest,” said Patti Pon with Chinook Blast. “So even in our six years we have gone from the warmest to the coldest and everything in between and we still regularly have in the hundreds of thousands of visitors.”

The weather is so warm, the Calgary Zoo Wilder Institute cancelled the outdoor penguin walk Thursday.

The spring-like temperatures are confusing to some other animals.

Bees are flying in February, and though they often emerge for quick bathroom breaks on warm winter days, warm stretches like these can confuse bees and strain the hives.

“They’re using a lot of energy to fly around and look for stuff and then they come back hungry,“ said Michael Dabrowski with Calgary and District Beekeepers Association. ”That’s the biggest risk right now is that they’re going to run out of reserves before the real spring hits."

Wildlife experts say bears may also emerge so people should always carry bear spray and stay in a groups if you’re out in the woods for a walk.

“And those animals that go into torpor --bears for example --can respond to the extreme changes in weather,” said Everett Hanna from the Wildlife Analytics Lab at Lethbridge Polytechnic.

“In southern Alberta, not uncommon to see bears all months if the year,” added Hanna.

Dry conditions

Another potential hazard is the dry conditions.

Fire safety should also be top of mind with toasty temperatures and crispy grass, like tinder lying exposed.

“It’s been very busy in Foothills County since the start of this year,” said Foothills County Fire Chief Kelly Starling. “We’ve had seven grass fires in January and it’s Feb. 5 today and we’ve (already) had five grass fires in February,”

A fire advisory remains in effect for Foothills County.

For more on Chinook Blast, go here.