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.
View bioWeekly outlook | May 9-14, 2026 Issued May 5, 2026
A quiet start to the 2026 Fire Season except for BC
Lingering snow cover over large sections of Canada has delayed the start of the fire season in many regions. Once the snow does melt, there is a spring window for fire activity as typically there is lots of dead organic from last year and fires are easy to start with some dry and windy weather. This spring window lasts until the vegetation greens up. Almost all these fires are human-caused and are preventable.
Snow depth 5 May 2026.
Current Fire Situation
Most of the fires are western Canada and most of the fires under control or being held. Note that Alberta has 13 holdover fires from last year. BC has seen a number of spring fires with the recent hot weather and dry conditions.
Map showing location and status of fires in Canada as of May 5th.
ciffc.ca
Forecasted weather May 9-14
The first map I look at for longer range forecasts is the 500 mb with height anomalies. Fire folks have known for decades that fires are associated with persistent upper ridges (Blocking Ridges – air sinks, warms and dries and if the ridge is stationary/near stationary the fine and medium dead fuels dry out and are available to burn). These blocking ridges eventually collapse or move off, and this usually is accompanied by a cold front moving across the region bringing strong and shifting winds sometimes accompanied by lightning.
We see a ridge over BC – Alberta early the forecast period but the ridge does stay long.
Below are the weekly temperature anomalies as well as the 5-day precipitation totals for May 9-13 2026.and we can see that BC and AB are warmer than normal and that much of BC and Alberta receive little or no rain.
ECMWF weekly temperature anomaly May 11-18, 2026
ECMWF | Charts
The forecasted precipitation 5 day precipitation for May 9-13, 2026
ECMWF | Models
Fire weather outlook for May 9-14
Quiet over much of Canada except dry and warm/hot conditions over the west. May 9-11 conditions are conducive for fire in BC and Alberta and conditions remain conducive for southern BC including the coast and Vancouver Island for May 12-14. The lack of lightning means any new fire starts will be human caused.
Questions?We have the answers
Questions, including media requests for Mike Flannigan, can be emailed to wildfire@tru.ca.
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