Widespread rain is expected today in British Columbia’s southern Interior, providing much-needed relief for firefighters battling major wildfires in the region. The Columbia Shuswap Regional District states that while cooler weather may increase fire behavior at the Bush Creek East blaze near Chase, the rain will allow firefighters to intensify their efforts against the fire, which currently spans 431 square kilometers. According to Environment Canada’s weather radar, light-to-medium precipitation is falling from Merritt to Salmon Arm, covering parts of the Fraser Canyon, Central Okanagan, and Shuswap regions.
Forecasts indicate that showers will persist until at least noon in communities like Kelowna, Lytton, and Salmon Arm, all of which are near the wildfires that have led to evacuation orders. The cool and wet conditions have already helped to contain fires such as McDougall Creek in the Central Okanagan, Ross Moore Lake south of Kamloops, and the Kookipi Creek fire near Lytton. As a result, officials in the Thompson-Nicola and Fraser Valley regional districts downgraded several evacuation orders linked to the Kookipi Creek wildfire to alerts yesterday. The BC Wildfire Service reported that parts of the fire received up to 16 millimeters of rain.
Evacuation orders have also been downgraded to alerts in the Bear Creek Road area of West Kelowna, related to the McDougall Creek fire, and in Turtle Valley in the Thompson-Nicola region, near the Bush Creek East blaze. Moreover, previous alerts for residents to prepare for evacuation on short notice have been cancelled in parts of Westbank First Nation and the Boucherie Industrial Area in the Central Okanagan.
The BC Wildfire Service website indicates that there are currently 422 active fires across the province, with 195 of them burning out of control and 12 classified as “fires of note” due to their visibility or potential threat to the public. This year’s wildfire season has already burned 19,111 square kilometers of land in British Columbia, with lightning being the cause of 72 percent of the more than 2,000 recorded fires.