We love the crackle, the subtle colours flickering and playing off our fold-out chairs in a backyard. There’s nothing like roasting the first marshmallow of the season as the heat of the day retreats into the air of a clear night.
But Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and your friendly neighbourhood weatherman are all saying the same thing: don’t do it due to the extreme risk of fire. For the record, here’s their map:
That “extreme” zone in Saskatchewan encompasses Rosthern in the southeastern corner, and stretches up toward Cold Lake, Alta. Unity, Meadow Lake, and Battleford are included, too.
READ MORE: Traffic on Sask. Highway 16 resumes after grass fire crossed lanes
In the “high danger” zone, we add Prince Albert, Big River, Watrous, Regina, and Moose Jaw.
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Now, the science.
Our jet stream continues modeling well to our north; this acts as a heat shield, allowing southerly products room to move on through. The high jet also means that the delightful little trough we have isn’t pulling the one low-pressure centre we’ve seen this past week any closer than it is.
As a result of this bulwark, Saskatchewan will stay as dry as the United States was in 1926 (I googled “prohibition”). Further, high-pressure air to our east (and, in two days, from the north) will continue our dry trend a little while longer.
Once that starts to set in, we should see our heat rise on out (sorry, short-wearers), creating a stratiform layer that aims to put a couple millimeters of rain over us.
That said, it’s probably still not enough to contend with the other major fire-issue factor. Here’s a current map of our surface wind:
I made it wide-ranging, so you can identify the Great Lakes, and establish that directly over the Prairie provinces we have some strong, contentious winds linking around our high-pressure center (just north of Lake Superior) feeding into the low well north of us, and easily the most identifiable feature on this map.
Between contention of pressures and a drastic and continuous change in temperature, this paints us a tapestry of 30 km/h sustained wind the further north you try to move through the province.
From that, you can understand why I’m writing this. Stack it with a grand total of 0.7mm of precipitation for the month of April so far, and there’s a danger of fires being fed in a big hurry.
So, slap a bread tag on the marshmallows for a couple of weeks, and keep an eye on globalnews.ca/Saskatoon for all the latest on fire potential in Saskatchewan.
For weather on the go download the Global News Skytracker weather app for iPhone, iPad or Android.
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