NWT Fires Already Double Annual Avg Burn; Yellowknife @ 20% Of Rainfall, No Rain In Sight For Months
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This weekend, the wildfires left a 13-kilometre-long scar along the main highway up to Yellowknife, forced an evacuation of a fishing lodge on Great Slave Lake and had cabin owners fearing for their properties.
According to Flannigan, about 8,000 fires burn about two million hectares of land each year in Canada an area about half the size of Nova Scotia. But Flannigan says two million hectares are double the average area lost each year in the 1970s. Some attribute that to climate change and Im one of those.
Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, say the southern part of the N.W.T. is experiencing the driest conditions in 50 years and warmer temperatures than usual.
Its just almost as if theres no weather around, he says. Weve seen, for example, in the last six weeks, precipitation in Yellowknife is only about 20 per cent of what it should be. Youre just not seeing any rain. Phillips says apart for a 30 per cent chance of rain Monday night, theres no rain on the horizon for the next two months. He agrees the conditions are the kind of thing models predicted would happen 40 years from now.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/tornadoes-of-fire-in-n-w-t-linked-to-climate-change-1.2706131