Cooler, wetter weather has offered B.C. wildfire fighters some reprieve in recent days, but Environment Canada says it won't last much longer.
Forecasts call for showers and cloud cover along the coast and stretching into parts of the Interior in the first half of the week before conditions shift back to sunny skies and above-normal temperatures.
Meteorologist Ken Dosanjh said the cooler weather experienced over the last few days has been a "kind of blip" in an otherwise consistently hot and dry summer. Beginning Thursday, those conditions are set to return with rainfall drying up and daily highs reaching the mid-30s in the southern Interior.
鈥淲e鈥檙e definitely bringing back the heat. Not to the same extent as we saw earlier in July, but heat nonetheless," Dosanjh said.
For the BC Wildfire Service, the brief break from that heat allowed them to tamp down some wildfire activity. In an update provided Sunday, the service said fire risk indices were down in many parts of the province and fire behaviour had been reduced on some major blazes.
Hundreds of wildfires continue to burn throughout B.C., however.
There are 354 active blazes as of Monday morning (July 29), 74 of which are considered out of control. Around 26 of those have forced people to flee their homes or currently have them on standby to leave.
The most recent orders came down in the Kootenays over the weekend. There, a wildfire complex of six blazes of more than 600 properties around Slocan early Sunday morning.
Two of those five fires 鈥� the 2,288-hectare Komonko Creek Wildfire and 637-hectare Aylwin Creek Wildfire 鈥� are considered wildfires of note, meaning they are especially visible or pose a threat to people or infrastructure.
There are four other wildfires of note in B.C.
Also in the southeast, the Argenta Creek Wildfire is burning at 14,745 hectares on the northeast shore of Kootenay Lake. There, around 200 properties are under evacuation order and at least 20 others are under alert.
In the same region, the Dogtooth FSR Wildfire is burning south of Golden. That 5,445-hectare blaze has placed 28 properties under evacuation order and 1,044 under alert.
Another wildfire of note is burning in the Kamloops Fire Centre. South of Ashcroft, the Shetland Creek Wildfire is 24,858 hectares and has six separate evacuation alerts and four evacuation orders attached to it.
The final wildfire of note is in the Cariboo Fire Centre. There, the 14,293-hectare Antler Creek Wildfire has placed the District of Wells and surrounding area under evacuation alert.
In total in the province, the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness said an estimated 1,200 properties are under an order and another 2,700 are under an alert.
So far this year, wildfires have burned a total area of 869,760 hectares in B.C. Last year, they consumed 2,842,275 hectares by the end of the season.
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