Much the like the rest of BC, Smithers was dry as a bone during the month of August.
“We saw less than 10 millimetres of precipitation and the average temperature was around 17.6 degrees,” says Cindy Yu, Environment Canada meteorologist.
The most talked about story of the summer continues to be the volume of wildfires that have wreaked havoc in various parts of the province including the Cariboo region with communities like Williams Lake and 100 Mile House forced to evacuate in early July.
Since April 1, there have been 1,154 fires burning over one million hectares.
The odd part of this whole thing is that the province has seen less lighting strikes than in years past.
“The lighting activity for the summer of 2017 has been actually been below normal and when we look at Western Canada we’ve only received about half of the average number of lightning strikes this month. BC has seen the lowest number of strokes but the forest fire conditions continue to be one of the top concerns over the province right now,” says Yu. “I think the bigger story is that it has been so dry that any sort of sparks can ignite things and that’s the situation that everybody has been dealing with the past two months.”
Heading into the Labour Day long weekend, a ridge of high pressure is expected to build again across the province bring warm temperatures into the high 20s and low 30s between Monday and Wednesday.