Canada expects ‘normal fire activity’ to start the 2025 season

The latest Canada-wide wildfire forecast suggests the opening months of the 2025 season are expected to bring “normal fire activity.”

The Northwest Territories enters 2025 on the back of two severe wildfire seasons.

While 2023 was easily the worst, burning millions of hectares and triggering evacuations that at one point affected more than two-thirds of the territory’s population, the 2024 season ranked only behind 2023 and 2014 in terms of area burned.

The territorial government has not yet begun producing public fire forecasts for the spring, but the Canadian government issues broader quarterly joint forecasts with the United States and Mexico.

The latest outlook, issued for March to May, expects “normal fire weather conditions with minimal activity” across Canada in March, then “normal levels” of fire activity focused on BC, the southern Prairies and southern Atlantic region in April.

May is commonly when wildfires become a threat in the NWT, though last year the season began in late April.

“Normal fire activity is expected in May” this year, the federal outlook states for the country as a whole, “with adequate precipitation expected in many regions despite the expected above-normal temperatures.”

“Alberta often has the bulk of its fire activity in spring, so even with a normal activity level, some large or frequent events are possible,” the outlook adds.

“Similar activity could also occur in western Saskatchewan and northeastern British Columbia, which is normal.”

Southern portions of the NWT near the Alberta border are going through a years-long drought that heightens fire risk, though a sizeable amount of the fuel in the region has already burned through fires in 2023 and 2024.

By the end of last month, that “large patch” of drought affecting the NWT, BC and Alberta had “changed little,” the outlook reported, though a small patch of extreme drought near Fort Simpson has “faded to severe,” meaning conditions improved slightly.