wildfires

Forest fires that have been burning for more than two weeks in central Newfoundland could be a sign of what’s to come as the province feels the impacts of climate change, a local climatologist says.

Vice President Kamala Harris called climate change an “immediate” and “urgent” crisis Monday as she detailed more than $1 billion in federal spending to respond to disasters such as deadly flooding in Kentucky and wildfires ravaging her home state of California.

A growing wildfire in British Columbia’s Okanagan area, about 21 kilometres southwest of Penticton, has prompted evacuation orders for hundreds of properties in the area.

Alaska is burning this year in ways rarely or ever seen, from the largest wildfire in a typically mainly fireproof southwest region to a pair of blazes that ripped through forests and produced smoke that blew hundreds of miles to the the Bering Sea community of Nome, where the normally crystal clear air was pushed into the extremely unhealthy category.