July 29th, 2014 ........ started off as a regular smokey day in Yellowknife..... 







The highlight of the day began around 5:15........downtown workers were starting to transit to various places following their workday....I was standing outside waiting for Rochelle to pick me up and I see that the sky is taking on various shades and hues outside of the regular pall of brown / grey smoke.....and I'm thinking that I've not experienced a rain storm or significant rain fall in Yellowknife ..... "I wonder what this is going to be like?"

Just as I'm getting into the car I see that the sky has assumed a different weather 'profile' every 90 degrees or so....we start making our way towards home and the skyline has noticeably changed at every stoplight....we see people everywhere looking up at the sky, cameras in hand.... wondering....thinking.....'this might get interesting!'

The sky behind us is pale pink yet black looms ahead of us and various other colours exist in our peripheral vision.....

Thunder precedes the lightning which precedes the rain....but down it comes....and we are thankful because it is so dry and we all want the fires to cease their burning in the territories and we're all tired of smoke....

The colours are bizarre to say the least....















 Rochelle took this outside our apartment building.....the storm is just starting.

I'm so glad someone took photos of the 'red lightning'

Probably the most bizarre aspect of this whole storm was that the sky turned completely black...which obviously means the sun was completely blocked....that in itself felt very peculiar since we still had direct sun until 10:30 or so....

I'd like to say everything ended happily.....and what I mean by that is that there was more smoke the next day just like one would encounter as they put out a campfire - it tends to produce a lot of smoke afterwards... however, it was a welcome rain and we managed another day of smoke and fire.....my conclusive thoughts on the subject is that the only references to smoke and fire I am receptive to come from the following songs....and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting right now.....peace and love my friends, peace and love :) 

Smoke From a Distant Fire
Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple 
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - various artists 
We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel 
Light My Fire - The Doors

Where there's smoke, there's fire.....

Earlier this week I was looking out the balcony window from the dining table where I have my computer and ended up staring at the sky for the longest time, wondering what was so different about it....finally realizing that the beautiful evening skies that I've fallen in love with in Yellowknife had returned....well, maybe I need to backtrack a bit so that you know what I'm talking about....

I can't even remember when the fires in the Northwest Territories  started - I think it was the middle of June when the smoke started to waft into town on occasion. It wasn't constant by any means but there were days when it was strong enough that your throat became a bit irritated and made it difficult to open up a window to get some fresh air (which wasn't there).

I'd gone back to Ontario the first part of July and was glad to leave the smoke behind.  The early reports included this one that comes from Wikipedia:

The 2014 forest fire season in the Northwest Territories of Canada is reputed to be the worst for at least two decades. As of 3 July, there had been 123 fires reported in the territory, of which at least 92 were still active and 13 were thought to be human-caused.

By 9 July the total had reached 164 fires and on 10 July over 130 fires were thought to be burning. The smoke generated by the fires was blown in the Prairie Provinces and created a moderate health risk there leading Environment Canada to declare an air quality advisory for southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba on 9. July. The smoke reached as far away as Bismark, North Dakota, over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) away. By 8 July the largest fires were the Lutsel K'e fire at 31,000 hectares (77,000 acres) and the Gamèti-Wekweeti fire at 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres). By 9 July an area of 5,000 square kilometres (1,900 sq mi) had been consumed, about the size of the island of Trinidad.

I had helped Danielle and Caitlyn move into their new home in Chesley, a really cute little town, and a cute little house and I'd stayed there most of my time in Ontario. Technology hook-ups took a few days and I was busy anyway so didn't really keep tabs on what was happening back in the territories. However, one radio news report sounded so awful I had to call Lauren and Rochelle right away to see if they were all right. Lauren hadn't seemed that concerned about it though the hydro went out while we were talking, which is exactly what the news report speculated might happen on a larger scale if the fires came in contact with transformers and the like.  By the time I came home the fires were still raging and I think the count was up to 190 active fires....I couldn't and can't even imagine what that looks like. However, I did hope that I would be able to see 'something' when I flew into the territories. 

It was cloudy coming over the prairies and I suspect we were just entering the territories when a bit of a clearing occurred and I was able to spot a couple of (what I would consider smaller fires) that were close to one another and looked to be in the vicinity of a small community. About 40 minutes out of YK while we were still travelling through cloud, it seemed like an atomic bomb mushroom cloud had formed ahead of us. Very dirty and smoke coloured, not cloud or vapour like at all. It probably is similar to a photo passed around on Facebook with a caption of smoke from the NWT's ending up in Portugal. However  the photo also depicts fires - outlined in red - and of course wafting smoke and smoke clouds. 

It was pretty hot in YK when I returned and there were some intense smoke days, to the extent that windows had to be completely closed. Not thinking we'd need AC for a short summer season, I found it quite unbearable and almost panicked at the feeling of stifling heat and limited oxygenated air in an apartment with no air circulation / ventilation. This intense period of time lasted about two weeks and the situation seemed to be getting worse instead of better. And dry.....we'd only had about two very short rainfalls since May and though we'd had a greater snowfall than the norm last winter, the water run off didn't seem to pool into lakes but went straight into evaporation. Imagine too, the fact that most of the fires in the territories were in places that didn't have road access so getting firefighters into those remote areas must have been challenging. The highways were being closed mostly due to limited visibility, the civic holiday weekend turned into a very long weekend for those that had arrived in YK only to find themselves unable to leave until the roads reopened which finally occurred on the 6th of August. People were either in line on the highway to leave, or waiting to come in. The city opened up some facilities for people that found themselves stranded' in YK. It also meant some food essentials were not getting into the city and that felt a little surreal to us.

The number of fires continued to increase and we could only pray for the temperatures to cool down and for rain to come. It did and there is another blog entry for the sole purpose of showing photos from that particular event which turned out to be a little bit spectacular. 

This came out the end of July when the number of active fires hit their peak.....

This seemed rather remarkable in that the fire left this roadside memorial alone.  

I think this was a CBC report showing the smoke reaching southern Ontario as the jet stream indicates above. 

So here we are - 23rd of August - the stifling heat and smoke has been gone for over a week now - well, the heat has been gone for a little longer than that.....we would have had a great summer had it not been for the 6-8 weeks of smoke and fire - but as we returned to normal territory weather, we're so glad to see our bright and clear sunny skies. I think the active fire count is down to less than 200 so there is much progress being made, but hearing that thousands of hectares of forest has been destroyed is unfathomable and I hope this is not a reoccurring theme of the north. 

There were so many people outside today it was so refreshing to see and I think we were all feeling rather pleased with life. The 2nd to last photo I post here is showing how we could stare straight at the afternoon sun since there was so much smoke and ash in the air.....the last photo shows a beautiful Yellowknife sunset with few smoke and ash distortions.....peace and love my friends, peace and love....!!

Mid-day sun......pretty, but obscured by smoke and ash!

Actually these two photos look quite similar though this one was taken after 11 pm in the middle of June...beautiful!!