Posted: 7/22/2026 10:36:35 AM EDT
[Last Edit: rfb45colt][Edited]
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The wildfire smoke that blanketed WI and other states is finally gone from up north. It was really really bad in the U.P. where my daughter lives. Her house is 75 yards from the lakeshore and she could not see her dock from her house for 2 days. The big fire in MN is only 170 miles from me here in Vilas County, so any northwest wind engulfes us in smoke. About the wildfires in Canada. The scale of the area involved is mind boggling. There's 869 million acres of forest in Canada, 9% of the world's total. it's not like our national parks, or even national forests. It's mostly unexplored, uninhabited true wilderness. In perspective, the Nicolet Natl Forest in WI is 650,000 acres, and it has lots of roads for fire fighting access. Canadian forests are 1,337 times as big. 5 times bigger than the state of Texas, and hardly any roads. More than half is boreal forest. Nobody lives there, nobody has ever set foot in most of it. Boreal forests consist of mostly conifers and soft woods like poplar & birch, lakes, rivers, ponds, bogs & swamps. And trillions of skeeters..  That's why there's so much smoke. It's not like clean hardwoods you burn in your fireplace. If you burned this same crap in your fireplace, you'd need your chimney cleaned weekly. Impossible to "manage", and fighting fires is only practical by air. The only management tools available are fires. You don't log boreal forests. There's nothing to gain. You let them burn themselves out, or rain storms will do it. Unless they're near inhabited areas, then you need fight them enough to save towns & homes. So it's not over yet.
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Originally Posted By kapusta: I wonder why it's such a problem now? I can't remember there being an issue in the past - just the last several years - or if it was an issue up there, it never seemed to reach down to WI. It's gotten warmer & drier, many of the areas burned have seen droughts. The climate changing is real, the statistics are there. The debate over climate change is over what causes it. I'm on the side of it's just a natural cycle. YMMV I asked "Google" if there have been more fires lately... Are there more wildfires in Canada than there used to be? AI Overview "While the total number of individual wildfires has actually decreased, the number and size of very large fires have spiked significantly. As a result, the total annual area burned in Canada has increased significantly over the last several decades due to hotter, drier, and more volatile climate conditions. Key trends defining the current state of Canadian wildfires include: More Area Burned: The number of large fires (those over 200 hectares) has doubled over recent decades, with consecutive record-shattering seasons. Climate Change Impact: Warmer atmospheric conditions create hotter, drier environments and more lightning strikes—which are responsible for roughly half of the fires but over 90% of the burned area. Remote Burning: Most of the burned area occurs in vast, unpopulated wilderness zones (such as the boreal forests) which are impossible to fight and are largely left to burn. |
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Originally Posted By kapusta: I wonder why it's such a problem now? I can't remember there being an issue in the past - just the last several years - or if it was an issue up there, it never seemed to reach down to WI. Arson |
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.
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Originally Posted By 9divdoc: Arson In areas with roads or water access, a distinct possibility. But think about that for a minute. How? How do you set fires in a wildeness you cannot even get to. Some of the biggest fires are In some of the most remote areas. They get that big because of their remoteness, and the difficulty in firefighting in boreal forest hundreds of miles from the nearest landing strips. Arson is only possible by airplanes dropping incendiaries... unless someone is dedicated enough to trudge through hundreds of miles of roadless swamps. bogs, lakes & rivers with a book of matches. And then worry about outrunning the blaze you just set if the wind shifts, for hundreds of miles on foot, to get back out again alive. OTOH, There's always the Kamikazee method... 
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