The wildfires can burrow into rich organic material, such as the vast peatlands that ring the Arctic, and smolder under the snowpack throughout the frigid winter.
The highway remained closed north of Willow after the fire jumped the road Sunday, authorities said. The fire started Saturday afternoon when wind blew a tree onto a power line.
The latest update put the Swan Lake fire’s size at 23,530 acres.
The haze is expected to subside by the middle of next week, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said.
Anchorage saw temperatures spike above 60 degrees every day in June for the first time in recorded history. The city also experienced near record low precipitation: Only 1/10 of an inch of rain fell the entire month.
Two villages along the Lower Yukon River have begun evacuating their most vulnerable residents from a tundra fire.The fire late Thursday was burning less than eight miles from St Mary’s and nearby Pitkas Point, and wind continues spreading the flames closer to the villages with a combined population of over 700 people. Yute Commuter Service is sending all its planes to St. Mary’s to evacuate residents, and Grant Aviation is prepared to assist.
The city is so parched and hot that even a cigarette tossed into a pile of fluffy cottonwood fiber could ignite a fire.
Mills in the heart of Canada's timber industry have fallen quieter this winter as wildfires and infestations made worse by climate change have made vast tracts of once valuable forest into barren stands of dead trees.
The fire had reached 90% containment by Thursday evening, according to the Alaska Division of Forestry.
As of Monday morning, the fire 3 miles north of Murphy Dome was estimated at 650 acres. About 146 personnel working to contain the fire, which was started by lightning on Friday.
Federal fire bosses are plotting a strategy to battle an unusually large early season wildland fire once it leaves military lands.
Much of Siberia this year has had unseasonably high temperatures, leading to sizable wildfires.
Drought levels have been raised already for parts of the province and Dave Campbell, with the B.C. River Forecast Centre, says the current forecast points to drought conditions provincewide in the coming weeks.
More than a month’s worth of rain has soaked parts of the state in just a few days, setting records.
“Smoke concentrations will be such that they could impact public health at times, according to an advisory issued by the state Division of Air Quality.
Air Quality will vary between Good and Unhealthy depending on wind flow and proximity to the fire.-Southcentral areas near–Willow, Wasilla, Palmer, Butte, Anchorage, and south over the Kenai Peninsula to include Cooper Landing, Kenai Keys and Skilak Lake areas.
Unseasonably warm, dry weather in a large section of the state set the stage for a roughly 20-acre wildfire near Palmer and kept authorities across Southcentral and Interior Alaska busy putting out backyard fires despite ongoing warnings against open burning.
Lytton, British Columbia, broke successive Canadian heat records early this week, with temperatures peaking at 121 degrees on Tuesday. Then the fires swept in.
A haze visible through Southcentral Alaska on Wednesday was caused by smoke from fires burning in Siberia that began flowing into Alaska in early July.
A smoke respite room has been set up at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital. The Chandler Room on the first floor will be open 24 hours a day until further notice.
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