It’s not often that Southcentral Alaska residents wake to thunder in the middle of the night. But what forecasters are calling an unusual storm moved from the Talkeetna Mountains into the Matanuska Valley and then Anchorage and south to the Kenai Peninsula from Wednesday night into Thursday morning. At least one lightning-caused structure fire was reported.

“It’s been hot, it’s been dry, and it’s been windy. And those winds gusts of 20 miles per hour, it’s kind of funneled through the Andreafsky River drainage,” said Beth Ipsen. Federal entities sent in more firefighters this week, and some residents are thinking about preparing their go-bags.

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.

Air tankers and smokejumpers responded to the fire, which the division said Thursday is no longer a threat.The tanker dumped retardant to help contain the fire, which had spread south, scorching about five acres of tundra. Much of Southwest and Southcentral Alaska is under a red flag warning because of hot, dry and windy conditions.

More than 100 acres of forest have burned in Kornsjø on the Swedish border. At one point, several cabins were in danger of catching fire.

The blaze was the fourth such incident in the last one month, as Delhi’s landfills are catching fire due to heavy build up of methane between the layers of millions of tonnes of garbage and high temperatures the city. Local residents said small fires keep erupting in the huge mountain of waste, but they have not seen such a massive one that broke out on Tuesday night.

Less snow than usual fell in the area this winter. It melted early, exposing the tundra. A steady wind has dried the vegetation, and hardly any precipitation has fallen since early March. Thoman said that with no rain and abundant sunshine, the tundra has remained brown and dry. The fire still is not threatening the community of Kwethluk or any Native allotments.

Fires are already erupting in Siberia this spring, sending billowing smoke into the western United States. One of the regions with the largest number of extinguished forest fires was in Omsk Oblast. Videos from the Siberian Times showed wildfires raging across the Omsk and Tyumen oblasts in Western Siberia, while satellite data showed several fires across the landscape beginning in the first half of April.

Delhi’s Ghazipur landfill site set ablaze due to the release of methane gas, as there many dry leaves on the site at that time and also as the temperature in the city is very high, the leaves caught fire from the gas and set the entire landfill site ablaze. The entire area was covered with smoke.

A handful of fires burning east of Humboldt continue to spread, although some containment efforts have made progress in the McFarland Fire and River Complex...

A handful of fires burning east of Humboldt continued to grow overnight with minimal containment, bringing air quality and travel impacts. Parts of State Route 36 have reopened to controlled traffic. Overall hot, dry conditions are expected to complicate fire suppression efforts.

The wildfire has now grown to 565 square kilometres in size.

The driest summer in 150 years has turned Yakutia into a tinderbox and seen wildfires tear through the region.

Parts of Interior and Southcentral Alaska will see poor air quality as a result of wildfires this week, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation warned on Tuesday.

An unknown number of residents, firefighters and policemen are reportedly trapped between two fronts of a major wildfire in northern Athens that has already destroyed homes in the suburb of Varymbombi and is spreading to Thrakomakedones.

Finland’s worst wildfire in more than half a century scorched the country’s northwest for a fifth day on Friday, tearing through forests left dry by record summer heat.

As of Monday, some 300 wildfire were burning across British Columbia. Thirty-seven blazes, 12 per cent of all B.C. fires, are rated as highly visible or a threat to life or property. Several new evacuation orders and alerts were posted over the weekend by regional governments across B.C.’s southern Interior.

The haze is expected to subside by the middle of next week, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service said.

Air quality concerns have extended across the foothills and west-central Alberta including Calgary and surrounding areas.

Active fires in northeastern Ontario and eastern Manitoba are expected to send smoke across northern Quebec today and Wednesday, Environment Canada said in a special air quality statement posted for each of the region’s 14 communities.