Caution urged as warm November weather prompts wildfire concerns

From the impacts on ice carving at the annual All is Bright Festival to increased wildfire risk, Curtis Goodrum looks at the impacts of the warm weather.

It’s mid-November, when the average temperature is usually around or at 0 C in Edmonton.

This year, the city is seeing forecasted highs of 4 C, 5 C, and even 8 C for Sunday.

That warm weather is good for people looking to spend time outdoors, but not necessarily for seasonal festivals and wildfire crews.

Friday was the start of the All is Bright Festival on 124 Street, which celebrates the coming winter with lights, entertainment and ice sculptures.

While the heat might seem a problem for those ice sculptures, it’s not the main issue.

The sculptors are using manufactured ice that is directionally frozen with no air inside to keep it safe from the heat, but the sun is still a concern.

“We really try to mitigate the sun hitting the ice at all,” said Cliff Vacheresse, with Activate Arts Alberta.

“We’ll bring pieces to shaded tarps, blocks of wood, anything we can get the sun off of the ice with … because it really does make it deteriorate quite quickly.”

Vacheresse says they have been dealing with a lot of warm events in the winter over the past several years.

When the warm weather and lack of snow can be a real problem is if a wildfire were to start.

“The grass is all dried off, the leaves are off the trees, there’s a lot of fuel on the ground, what we call fine fuels,” said Derrick Forsythe, with Alberta Wildfire. “Now that we’re outside of the legislated wildfire season, burning can happen without a permit.

“As people are conducting their fall burns, there can be instances where those burns, if they’re not properly managed or properly supervised, can ignite some of that fine fuel and could result in wildfires.”

Most of the staff they hire to fight wildfires are also seasonal, so there are fewer around now than in the summer, he added.

There are a number of fire advisories and restrictions in place in areas around Edmonton and southern Alberta.

“We ask people outside in the rural areas to try and hold off on their fall and winter burning until there’s 15 centimetres of snow on the ground, and not to burn if the winds are above 15 kilometres per hour,” Forsythe said

Unlike in the summer though, “the conditions just aren’t present to allow fires to grow and fester in a way that they would in the middle of the summer under similar conditions,” Forsythe said.

Shorter days and higher humidity can help with what’s known as overnight recovery, where moisture can be reabsorbed into the ground, dry grass and the like.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Curtis Goodrum