SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Environment Canada is forecasting a warmer, wetter summer than usual but when it comes to predicting the severity of the forest fire season, all bets are off.

A rare lightning storm over Yellowknife as seen from Pilot's Monument. - NNSL file photo

That is, according to senior climatologist David Phillips.

His overall prediction for the summer is for slightly warmer temperatures and more rainfall than usual. Phillips said that by no means is he predicting that the NWT will see a break in its drought cycle which has persisted for almost half a decade now. He said the old adage "April showers brings may flowers," doesn't really hold true in the Yellowknife area.

Phillips pointed out that the city received slightly more snowfall than usual and from September to March, Yellowknife received a fair bit more precipitation than usual.

"But you are very dry now. It hasn't rained very much in Yellowknife. In the last three weeks you've had about a thimbleful of moisture - about two millemetres," Phillips said. "You don't really get a lot. This is not your wet season. Normally we'd have seen about 10 to 11 millemetres. You've had no snow on the ground for about three weeks. You lost it about the middle of April."

Phillips said the dry ground was a factor in the Fort McMurray fires noting that since last October, that area has had its second warmest and driest fall and winter on record. But with the snow melting quite quickly this year in the NWT, he said more runoff would be created.

"You went from slush to sweat - 32 centimetres of snow on the ground on April 16 to just eight centimetres in four days," Phillips said. "It was like a Chinook that took that snow right from in front of your eyes."

Phillips pointed out that during the last two spring and summers in Yellowknife, May, June and July were among the driest on record and they produced the two worst fire seasons in the territory's history in terms of square-kilometres burned.

He said he is not about to predict another record drought for those months this year because he just doesn't make predictions that call for record anything. Phillips said when it comes to making his long-range forecast, temperatures he can do but rainfall is more of a crap shoot.

"At this point, Canadian and U.S. weather models are showing warmer than normal temperatures across the NWT for June, July and August.

"I'm always reluctant to talk about about precipitation because our models are not very good at that. They often just show the results of something called equal chance. So we're sitting on the fence," Phillips said. "But the models are showing wetter than normal for the NWT in June, July and August. How much would I value that? Not very much. But there is something in the models showing a greater amount of precipitation."

The problem with that, Phillips said, is that in the summer we receive a lot of our precipitation through thunderstorms but there is always the accompanying risk that we could have more lightning strikes.

"If they come with wet weather that's good. If they come with dry weather that's not so good," Phillips said, noting that lightning strikes are a main cause of wildfires.

If it is a warmer than usual summer as predicted, more precipitation is needed just to balance things out, said Phillips.

The NWT Power Corporation is predicting water levels more near normal this summer. It's hoped that will mean the Bluefish and Snare hydro dams can operate at capacity and reliance on diesel generation will not be needed as it was this time last year.

Richard Olsen, manager of fire operations with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, (ENR) told reporters last week that he is aware of the wetter long-range forecast but pointed out that the ground is very dry.

With the forest fire season just underway, he said he is wary of predictions for the wildfire season.

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