Will Quebec’s forest fire season be as bad as it was last year?

With fires raging out west, many people have begun to wonder what Quebec's 2024 forest fire season could look like, and if it will be as bad as 2023.

The harrowing wild fires ripping through parts of western Canada are igniting bad memories in Quebec.

In 2023, Montreal and large swaths of the province were blanketed in smoke as towns further north were evacuated due to the flames.

The big question on the minds of many: what’s it going to be like this year?

“The expectation is that it will not be as catastrophic as it was it last year,” said Evelyne Thiffault, a professor of forest ecology and management at Université Laval in Quebec City. “We should not have such a terrible summer.”

At one point during the summer of 2023, Montreal was the city with the worst air quality in the world.

Pillars of smoke wafted down from sprawling forest fires in the north that caused some towns to be evacuated.

According to Thiffault, however, this year is looking better. Forecasts can change, but she says here it’s looking like more moisture and less severe drought conditions in Quebec than last year.

“The moisture should be high enough so that there should not be as much of a drought as we had the last year,” she said.