The McMurray Is Still Burning
The fire stalled for a while because of a brief change in the weather but that was temporary: Fort McMurray firefighters facing extreme fire conditions.
The fire has burned 875,000 acres [1370 square miles/3550 square kilometers] and now threatens the camps for the oilsands workers. If the sands catch fire it will be an ecological and economic disaster for Alberta and Canada. The price of oil is up around $50/barrel because of the loss of production.
It is going to take a change in the weather pattern to bring this fire under control, and some officials believe that it might not be out until the Fall.
2 comments
I’ve been following this. We are *used* to extreme fires, as much as anyone can be said to be used to that kind of thing. A change in weather could just make things worse. It was because of a weather change that caused the Black Saturday fires of 2009 to rage out of control. An evening cool change whipped the 400 fires into a frenzy and caused many to merge into a single huge front and the resultant winds pushed the fire front to 12km/hr, and some fronts to 1.2km/min! It got so hot, people as far away as half a km were killed by the heat.
Unless they get some serious rain, it’s not looking good. I truly wish them well!
The pictures of the alloy wheels that were a puddle of metal after the fire went through on Black Saturday still freaks me out because I know how hot it has to get to do that. Fires this big make their own weather, so you need a sustained pattern of low temps and high humidity with minimal winds to hope to control them. If the oilsands light and the fire goes underground all bets are off. There are coal mine fires that have been burning for decades.