Fort McMurray Smoke Drifts Over Vermont

Satellite photo from the National Weather Service
office in Burlington, Vermont shows smoke
over the region from Alberta  

People in Vermont and much of the rest of the Northeast might have noticed the sky took on a hazy look last evening, and the blue sky still has a greyish hue to it this morning.

That's smoke from Alberta, mostly from the fire that devastated Fort McMurray last week. The fire is still burning big time and spewing smoke far and wide.

Depending on which way the wind has been blowing, the smoke has gotten as far from Alberta as the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Winds have shifted, and now the smoke is blowing over us.

Air quality isn't wonderful, but it's not bad enough to trigger air pollution alerts.

But the hazy Vermont sky is a reminder that the North American wildfire season is off to a bad start.

And we'll probably have hazy days like this several more times this summer.

Canada's Fire Weather Spread Into Minnesota, Other U.S. Areas, Too.

Cover photo from Canada's National Post illustrates
the utter destruction of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  

The cataclysmic Fort McMurray wildfire rages on, and the weather that caused that fire spread into the Upper Midwest.

Fires broke out there, too.

While certainly tiny in comparison to Fort McMurray, wildfires in northern Minnesota prompted evacuations and threatened numerous homes.

An assisted living facility was evacuated as a precaution in Minnesota, the Duluth News Tribune reported. 

It's not in immediate danger, but they wisely wanted to get residents out of the way in case the wind changes direction and drives the fire toward the facility.

Television station KARE reported one fire in northern Minnesota had consumed 450 acres as of Friday and was only 10 percent contained.

The temperature reached 92 degrees in Duluth, Minnesota Friday, the earliest 90 degree reading on record there. That reading also broke the previous record high for the date by a full 10 degrees.

Minneapolis also had a record high for the date Friday at 92 degrees. Saturday morning Minneapolis was among the places stuck in a murky cloud of grey smoke.

Air pollution is a big problem in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota now, too. Smoke from Fort McMurray, combined with smoke from local wildfires, has made fine particulates in the air skyrocket.

Scattered thunderstorms arrived later Friday in northern Minnesota, cooling the temperatures and providing a little wetting.

But the rain wasn't enough to contain fires, or eliminate the fire danger across northern Minnesota. Red flag warnings are up for today because windy dry weather could encourage more wildfires.

Updates And More Scary Fort McMurray Fire Videos

The fire menacing a Fort McMurray neighborhood
Photo by Mary Sexsmith  

It had to be terrifying. The flames descended on Fort McMurray, Canada so fast that nobody had time to grab anything.

Just get in the car and flee as fast as you can. But you couldn't go fast because of the traffic congestion caused by everybody else fleeing.

It's amazing that I have only heard of two deaths with this thing so far. Both apparently were in car crashes during the evacuation and not the fire itself.

Reuters reports at least 1,600 structures, including hundreds of homes, have been destroyed so far.

There is no telling when all these evacuees will be able to return to Fort McMurray. Some had to evacuate evacuation centers because of the spreading fire.

Smoke from the fire has spread southward all the way to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastline, That's a distance of at least 2,500 miles, which tells you massive and powerful this blaze is.

On top of the human suffering - which of course is by far the most important -- the fires have disrupted production in the oil sands area around Fort McMurray.

So this affects you. Oil on the world markets is trading at a 3 percent higher because of tighter supplies brought on by the Alberta fire, CBC reports.

Below is a compilation of some of the wilder videos.

Here's one view of the harrowing escape. You can tell how frightened the people in the car are amid the flames. I'd be scared out of my mind, too:



Here's the traffic congestion. No surprise when the guy on the motorcycle finally freaks out:



This guy is so understandably frightened he can't start his car as spot fires break out on front lawns and a wall of flames approaches from the forest. He says it's probably the last time he'll see his house.

Sadly, he was probably right.



In this rear dash cam, I thought he was driving at night the smoke was so thick. I realized it was daylight when he emerged from the worst of it:

Record Heat And Drought Bring Apocalyptic Fire To Canadian City.

A massive wildfire sweeps into Fort McMurray,
Alberta, Canada on Tuesday.  

You might have seen this on the news, but while you were watching election returns out of Indiana last night, a Canadian city burned up.

Fort McMurray, population about 83,000, was evacuated as a massive wildfire pummeled the city.

After a very, warm, dry winter, strong, very dry winds swept Alberta and surrounding areas amid record heat. Fort McMurray had a record high temperature of 90 degrees, but that was the least of the concern.

This was one of the largest evacuations in Canadian history.

It was certainly the largest evacuation in Alberta history. Whole neighborhoods went up in flames.

Videos are at the bottom of this post.

Highway 63, the main highway in and out of Fort McMurray, was a scene of chaos as traffic came to a standstill amid the panicked evacuations, and flames swept over the road.

The Edmonton Journal reported no fatalities in the fires yet, but the situation is still unfolding, and I fear some people didn't get out in time, based on how scary the scenes looked.

The Edmonton Journal did report people going in and out of homes and fleeing in one mobile home park as a wall of flames swept in, so that doesn't sound good.

Whole neighborhoods are known to be on fire, but firefighters also saved many other neighborhoods. Fires extended to near or even downtown Fort McMurray. News video showed a Super 8 Hotel on fire in the downtown area.

Fire along busy Highway 63, on which people were
evacuating from the blaze, Tuesday in
Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. 

A large area of southwestern Canada remains under very high fire danger today amid the high temperatures, strong winds and dry air.

The wildfire season in North America is off to a terrible start, thanks to a warm, dry winter in many regions.

Huge wildfires swept parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas earlier this spring, causing widespread damage.

What little snow there was melted early in northern areas. The earliest wildfires on record were reported last month in Alaska.

Even here where I am in New England, there were many relatively small brush fires in April because of dry conditions and a premature snow melt. (Rain arrived this week in the Northeast, which is definitely helping.)

El Nino is largely to blame for this situation, since it tends to cause warm dry winters in the northern half of North America.

While I can't specifically tie climate change to the Fort McMurray fire, or any of the wildfires this spring for that matter, the fires are consistent with what climatologists say is a likely consequence of the warming now under way.

By the way, I saw some internet meanness already concerning the Fort McMurray fire. It's in the tar sands area of Alberta, and critics say the oil extraction there is environmentally damaging and contributes to global warming.

Though almost everybody is correctly sympathetic to the people in the fire zone, a few jerks said they deserve it because they're supposedly seeing the consequences of global warming.

By that logic, I guess people deserved to be in car wrecks because they used fossil fuels while driving to work.

Idiotic hostility helps nobody. Let's just hope Fort McMurray recovers well, and I encourage everyone to help them.  Click on this link to the Red Cross to help the city and its fire victims.

California had some drought relief this winter, so it's a question whether the wildfire season there will be as bad as recent years.

But a vast stretch of northern forest from Alaska through much of Canada is dry, so that region is primed for more disasters like the one in Fort McMurray on Tuesday.

This video shows a Global News reporter near the fire as it approaches heavy traffic along Highway 63 in Fort McMurray:



This CBC report with some scary, and sad video is also an eye-opener