Edmonton ends 2023 season with record-high 299 smoke hours, up 70 from prior report

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Edmontonians handled a report excessive variety of smoke hours this summer time with 2023’s whole of 299 surpassing the prior excessive set in 2018 by 70 hours, or practically three full days.

Surroundings and Local weather Change Canada tracks the info and defines smoke hours as when visibility is lower than 9.7 kilometres, or six miles. The statistic is usually measured from Might 1 to Sept. 30 annually.

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This 12 months’s whole additionally marks simply the second time that greater than 200 smoke hours have been recorded in a given 12 months since data have been first tracked within the early Fifties, and in addition a greater than 30 per cent improve over the earlier report.

“The local weather is altering,” stated Surroundings and Local weather Change Canada lead meteorologist Rob Griffith.

“We’re getting clearly extra temperature data, hotter summers, after which this 12 months was significantly dry, particularly early in the summertime.”

This 12 months’s whole brings the last decade common as much as 106.3 smoke hours, or greater than double that of the prior decade.

Smoke hours are much less frequent after September ends, however can nonetheless occur, together with 21 smoke hours recorded in October 2021. Griffith famous air high quality warnings remained in impact early Monday for components of northern Alberta and southern N.W.T.

Surroundings and Local weather Change Canada forecasts daytime highs to surpass 21 C in Edmonton over the upcoming Thanksgiving lengthy weekend, together with a excessive of 23 C on Sunday.

Griffith stated the motion of wildfire smoke will depend on quite a lot of unbiased components, making it tough to precisely forecast.

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“Issues change so quickly with a lightning strike,” he stated. “How sturdy is the hearth? How a lot smoke is being produced? Is it capturing all of the fires?

“The place’s the smoke going to be? The environment is three dimensions, so smoke aloft doesn’t affect anybody on the floor, however rapidly it could actually come right down to the floor, inflicting actually poor air high quality.”

4 of the very best variety of smoke hours have come since 2017, together with the three highest values which have been all set inside the previous six years.

There have been 4 years the place greater than 100 smoke hours have been recorded, with three of these 4 additionally coming since 2018.

Wildfire smoke blanketed the town over each Victoria Day and Labour Day lengthy weekends this 12 months. The smoke was additionally extreme sufficient to immediate the cancellation of quite a lot of Edmonton-area occasions together with one evening of an out of doors comedy pageant, a nationwide youth soccer match, and a number of out of doors markets.

“Smoke at any focus shouldn’t be good for individuals’s well being, significantly individuals with lung illness, coronary heart illness, older adults, kids, people who find themselves pregnant, and anybody who’s working open air.”

As of early Monday, there have been 84 energetic wildfires throughout Alberta, with about two-thirds of these being attributable to lightning.

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