Canada fire weather outlook

Each week during the wildfire season, Dr. Mike Flannigan will share a five- to 10-day fire weather outlook for Canada. This is a first step in developing a national early warning system for wildfire in Canada. The fire weather outlook will be posted every Tuesday.

Mike Flannigan is the scientific director of the Institute for Wildfire Science, Adaptation, and Resiliency as well as the BC Innovation Research Chair in Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science at Thompson Rivers University.

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Weekly Outlook | August 8-13, 2026 Issued August 4, 2026

All information provided below is reported at the time of publication and may not reflect more recent updates.

Throughout this fire season, I have invited colleagues to contribute sections on wildfire-related topics to the outlook. This week, I am pleased to share a summary on El Niño by Dr. Cordy Tymstra (CEO Whitebark and Sage Wildfire Science and Management Inc., and Adjunct Professor at Thompson Rivers University). Dr. Tymstra’s contribution appears in italics in the A Look Ahead section below.

Current fire situationImpacts

We often discuss number of fires and area burned, as these figures are readily available (Figure 1; www.ciffc.net). However, fire and smoke are ultimately about impacts on people, communities, infrastructure, ecology, and the broader economy – both insured and uninsured. We have some measures for these impacts, but they are far less readily available than fire count and area burned data. Then there is the human dimension – the toll that fire and smoke take on people: evacuations, loss of homes and prolonged exposure to poor air quality. These aspects are difficult, if not impossible to measure, yet they are critically important for the physical and mental health of all those affected, including first responders. These impacts are growing as fire activity increases across Canada, the United States and Europe. Figure 2 shows numerous fires and associated smoke plumes over parts of western North America on August 2nd, 2026.

Figure 1. 2026 Fire Statistics for Canada as of August 4th, 2026.CIFFC | Home

Figure 2. GOES-West GeoColor imagery loop for August 2nd, 2026.

Fire weather outlook August 8-13

Fire activity in southern BC and parts of the NWT will continue during the outlook period, as these areas remain dry or mostly dry (Figure 3). Of particular concern is the potential for numerous new lightning-caused fire starts in BC on Saturday, August 8th (Figure 4), much of which could involve dry lightning with little or no accompanying precipitation. Some of the persistent fires in Saskatchewan could continue to grow, but the remainder of the country is expected to remain relatively quiet during the outlook period. Figure 3 also shows little or no rainfall forecast across much of the western United States, suggesting fire activity there will continue to grow over the coming weeks.

Figure 3. ECMWF 120-hour Quantitative Precipitation Forecast (QPF) August 13th, 2026.

Figure 4. ECMWF 12-hour lightning density forecast for Canada, August 8th ,2026 (evening).

A look ahead El Niño Officially Arrives

For centuries, Peruvian fishermen off the coast of South America noticed that the ocean became unusually warm, and the fish migrated and disappeared every one to three years. They named this natural climate phenomenon, El Niño, which in Spanish means, “The Little Boy” or “Christ Child”, since the warming of the ocean currents peaked during the Christmas season. During an El Niño event, the normal trade winds that blow east to west, weaken and sometimes reverse direction. This causes warm subsurface ocean waters to move and pool eastward in the Equatorial Pacific. The alternate climate pattern named La Niña develops when the trade winds push warm water westward. The cycling of El Niño and La Niña events is referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

There are several ways (indices) to measure an El Niño event. A common index is NOAA’s three-month running mean of sea surface temperature anomalies from the average (1981 – 2010) in a region in the Pacific Ocean referred to as Niño 3.4 (5°N–5°S, 120°–170°W ) (data available at: www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/oni.ascii.txt. This is called the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI). The size of the anomaly determines the event category (i.e., weak 0.5 to 0.9 oC, moderate 1.0 to 1.4 oC, strong 1.5 to 1.9 oC, and very strong greater than 2.0 oC).

Monthly plots can also be used to track the development (strength and persistence) of an El Niño event. El Niño events usually peak in December. The plot below shows the average December sea surface temperature anomaly from average in the Niño 3.4 region (data available at: www.psl.noaa.gov/data/correlation/nina34.anom.data).

On July 13, 2026, the NOAA Climate Prediction Center forecast a very strong (“Super”) El Niño in 2026/2027. This event is 97% likely to strengthen through the end of the year and continue into early spring. In their three-month seasonal anomaly forecasts (SEAS5) issued monthly, ECMWF noted that an El Niño is developing faster and stronger than expected with anomalies forecasted to exceed +2 oC across the Nino3.4 region for the August-October period. This event is on target to become the strongest El Niño since instrumental data collection began in 1950.

El Niño affects weather patterns worldwide due to the southward shift of the Pacific jet stream (e.g., increased risk of drought and wildfire in Indonesia and Northern Australia, heavy rains and floods along the west coast of South America, and in the United States, warm and dry in the north, and increased rain in south. The 2026/2027 El Niño will bring a warmer, drier winter in western and possibly central Canada.

Not all El Niño events are the same. However, as the strength of the El Niño increases, the impact on the wildfire environment usually increases. There are also other variables and teleconnections (PNA, PDO and NAO) that influence regional weather. In Alberta, disastrous spring wildfire seasons followed very strong El Niño events in 1982/1983 (2.8 oC warmer),1997/1998 (2.4 oC warmer) and 2015/2016 (3.0 oC warmer) when the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire occurred.

The fourteen prediction systems used to forecast the upcoming “Super” El Niño are unverified because the forecasted 3.6 oC warming anomaly has never happened before. We are in uncharted territory.

Figure 5. Winter impact of El Niño across North America. (Image credit: NOAA, www.noaa.gov/understanding-el-nino)

Figure 6. Average December sea surface temperature anomaly relative to the 30-year baseline average (1991-2020) for Region 3.4. Baseline updated on a five-year cycle.