Record rains in Alberta this summer have given way to an almost-predictable stat of the opposite kind: zero wildfires. The province’s wildfire dashboard showed none in any of its 10 forest areas on Tuesday. A year ago, the province was enduring heat waves while reporting 47 active wildfires. Melissa Story, a provincial information officer for Alberta Wildfire, said Tuesday the agency took the last remaining wildfire off its books the day before. She told CTV News Edmonton it’s the first time in 40 years that an August wildfire hasn’t been burning in Alberta. “It’s attributed to all of the spring rain, rainy conditions ... and the cooler temperatures that we’ve had throughout the province,” Story told CTV News Edmonton. She said the province had wildfires burning consistently over the last five fire seasons, continuing into the winter. “A carryover fire is when one starts in the previous year and then it burns and smoulders underground, and we have to go back and check it in the spring,” Story said. “We often see those kinds of conditions in Alberta, especially when we see larger-scale wildfires.” Two of the previous three years saw record-setting fire numbers in the province. The 2025 wildfire season ended up as the second-worst on record nationally, with more than 89,000 square kilometres burned across Canada. That followed a record season in 2023, when the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported that 185,290 square kilometres burned across the country — more than double any other year since 1983 — including 18,371 square kilometres of forest in Alberta, according to Alberta Wildfire. To date in 2026, 688 wildfires have burned 177.2 square kilometres of forest in the province, compared to 990 that burned 6,705 square kilometres of it a year ago. Story said wildfire danger is relatively low across Alberta, although it’s “a bit more elevated in the southern parts of the province.” “Our Calgary Forest area and those areas near Waterton Lakes National Park haven’t seen the same amount of rain that we’ve seen in other places in the province, and they’ve also seen some elevated temperatures,” she said. Of this year’s 668 fires, 141 of them were in northern Alberta’s High Level Forest Area, accounting for 137.2 square kilometres of forest, or 77 per cent, that has burned province-wide. The Lac La Biche Forest Area sits second on the list with 23.9 square kilometres burned, while the Rocky Mountain House Forest Area has had 12.6 square kilometres go up in flames. Last month, federal officials said this year’s wildfire season has been more manageable because of heavy rain in the southern Prairies and eastern Quebec, while higher-than-normal temperatures were forecast in the northern Prairies, Ontario, much of Quebec and the Northwest Territories. This year, more than 41,000 square kilometres of forest have burned nationally. While the provincial scene is relatively quiet, Story said wildfire crews stay busy preparing and training for their next action, whether it’s in Alberta or another province or jurisdiction. Story said 200 Alberta firefighters and 50 support staff are in British Columbia helping with efforts there. In July, Alberta sent about 100 firefighters to Ontario to help with work there. “We’re ensuring that they are ready to go when the time comes,” she said. “A lot of the time, we are sharing our resources with other provinces and other agencies that need it.”
