Heavy rain helps crews working on Highway 5 wildfires

Parts of Wood Buffalo National Park received as much as 40 mm of rain on Sunday, helping firefighters working on the Bear Creek complex near Highway 5.

Those fires don’t pose a threat to communities at the moment but they are burning in the vicinity of the highway between Hay River and Fort Smith. Parks Canada has warned smoke from the fires – and efforts to fight them – could disrupt traffic.

However, a planned ignition expected to take place later this week has now been postponed because of the sheer amount of rain over the weekend, which has reset fire danger in the park to low.

“This amount of rain will likely cause self-extinguishment in some areas,” Parks Canada stated late on Sunday. (The rain also kept helicopters assigned to the fires grounded.)

“Based on the recent precipitation, the ignition plan for Fire WB2026019 has been postponed,” Parks Canada added.

“No impacts to Highway 5 traffic flow are anticipated over the next few days.”