Coffee Time! #17

Hi everyone! It is another nice, sunny and hot day here. We don’t normally get weather this hot so early in the season, but we are this year. This has now been several days of this weather with the temperature reaching 90F (32C) during the day but cooling off to between 17 and 19 at night which helps to keep my apartment cooler.

Unfortunately, along with this hot and sunny weather it has been incredibly dry. We did not get much snow this past winter and the ground dried out quickly since we also received only minimal amounts of rain this spring. All of that means forest fires. And we have lots of them already.

The area in these photos has been burned twice in the last 40 years.

Our neighboring province has many serious forest fires, including some large ones close to our border which puts them about 30 miles (about 50km) away from us. But we have fires on our side too. The closest fire is about 17km away, but it’s still small, though also out of control.

One fire started on Monday at 4:30 pm and was about 250 acres (about 100 hectares) in size. It is now less than 2 days later and the fire is now 57,529 acres (23,281 hectares) in size. It’s still a long distance away though at about 25 miles (about 40 km).

It has been windy the last few days which is why the fires are getting big so fast. There is cooler weather coming though which will arrive on Friday and it will bring some showers with it too. That will help slow down the fires but won’t put them out unless we get a lot more rain than what is being forecast. It is a bad, and early, start to our fire season.

However, temperatures will stay more normal for the rest of the month which should help out a lot. Apparently more than 60% of fires this year have been caused by careless people. That always amazes me. Surely people can see that it is dry out in the forest and they should want to be careful. But people will deliberately ignore the fire bans that are in place and they decide to have a bonfire anyway.

Or they want to burn off some dead, dry grass and they pick a nice windy day to do it. It’s just plain crazy. Over the past 2 years all 3 of my siblings have passed away. Then last month a good friend of mine passed away. He was 3 years younger than me. Then last week another good friend of mine passed away.

He was 4 years younger than me. I am going to his funeral this afternoon. There has been a lot of things happen the past two years. Including the stress of moving and looking for a doctor. But change is always present all through life.

With spring comes the beginning of new life once again. It is beautiful out there now. Brilliant green grass and leaves on the trees and flowers beginning to bloom. Spring is such a beautiful time of year! Have a great day everyone!

Steve and Muffin.

©2025 Steve McLeod.