Canada’s Wildfire Season Is Off To A Ferocious Start

Crystal McAteer has watched ferocious wildfires chew through her home province of Alberta through the years, so she wasn’t surprised when flames arrived on her doorstep.

Still, McAteer, the mayor of High Level, Alberta, a town of roughly 3,200 some 460 miles north of Edmonton, had never seen anything like the Chuckegg Creek Fire.

An out-of-control blaze nearly the size of Rhode Island — 50 percent larger than last year’s record-breaking Mendocino Complex Fire in California — it has jumped rivers with ease, blackened the rain with soot and colored sunsets as far away as Britain.