Lightning Will SPARK NEW FIRES Today In British Columbia!!

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Good morning. It's Cariboo Weather Dude YouTube channel. That's right. It's Joey here and we got the warmth coming on.

[00:00:05]I've been talking about it for days.

[00:00:06]Going to get pretty hot in BC and we have the risk of lightning today in southern British Columbia.

[00:00:12]At least today for sure.

[00:00:14]And that could spark some new fires. I want you to be paying attention to where clouds are stacking up today where there happens to be maybe thunderstorms going on. If your lightning tracker is uh dinging on your phone, maybe pay attention to the mountain nearby that has lightning hitting it because maybe when it gets hot coming into Monday, Tuesday, especially Wednesday, you might see some fire stand up in those places and then you'll be the one aptly able to report it. Okay, let's get on with the show today. Let's go. There it is.

[00:00:41]>> This is bad news. My God.

[00:00:43]>> Falling out right now. Anything can happen.

[00:00:45]>> GET ON.

[00:00:46]WOW. I'LL watch the video later.

[00:00:50]They dry them up in this. So I mean it's good news like I'm having success as a content creator. You know, I made enough money this year that I consider myself a business now so then I like file my taxes. I'm like, "Well, look how good I did. Didn't I do good?" And then the taxman's like, "Yes, you did. Uh $3,000 please." I'm like, "For what?" The taxman's like, "Well, you work for yourself. You didn't pay taxes on your income." And I'm like, Oh, right. So now I'm really in trouble. Uh if you want to [email protected], drop me five bucks or join the Patreon or join the channel. That'd be awesome.

[00:01:27]Long story short, I was hoping to retire from fire today uh this year. I didn't want to do fire anymore. My body hurts.

[00:01:33]I'm 47 years old and then I got the tax bill and then Benson's calling me and he's like, "Hey, so you going to come back to work this summer? We got fitness test on Saturday." And I'm like, Okay.

[00:01:50]So maybe I'm going to work fire season again. Uh my body hurts. Just want to make content. Next year I will not be so surprised and I'm doing better keeping all my my receipts now.

[00:02:02]That's another thing I'm doing. I'm becoming a really professional content creator. Okay, let's talk about the weather today. Uh support the channel.

[00:02:08]Subscribe, share, like it. I could use the help right now, okay. So as some of you know, I'm making a switch now to use an Instant Weather for my forecasting and uh there's not much going on the board actually. I mean, we have southern Ontario has uh some freezing um frost advisory that's been going on. It's been cold there at night lately. Patchy frost damage to trees, things like that.

[00:02:28]There's been a little bit of a story out in eastern Canada where we had this line go through. Special weather statement 25 to 40 mm of rain, possibly more in showers Sunday into early Monday. But I mean, look at this. Like all of Canada's pretty quiet right now. There's not even much for clouds. You know, a little bit in Winnipeg. the country. There's like a lot going on down here in the United States. There this is Instant Weather developed by my friend Adam Skinner, great program and uh you can download the free version yourself if you like for your phone, right? So it's a it's a free app. There's a free version and then there's a professional version.

[00:03:05]This is the pro version which uh you can also download and use on your desktop and uh there'll be reasonable price that you can uh pay to have this this program. Look at it. It's awesome. It's so cool. So uh Florida, what's going on?

[00:03:18]Red. There's actually a tornado watch in Florida. So we're not talking about anything crazy like tornadoes today for BC. I don't think severity is the issue.

[00:03:26]It's not that we're going to have severe storms that we've been drawing out for quite a while. There's a lot of areas up higher in the mountain sides that have just lost their snow. So the greening up isn't happening. I mean, sure I go to Quesnel and there's some green grass there. Those lightning strikes are probably going to hit higher up on the mountains. I don't think many of these thunderstorms are going to actually, you know, affect towns all that much.

[00:03:48]Maybe one or two might uh from these cells that develop. But when you look out the window in Wells right now, you see like kind of patches of snow everywhere and there's grass sticking up. You can walk around now and not get your feet all wet in the snow.

[00:03:58]But there isn't a bunch of green stuff coming up here at the higher elevation.

[00:04:01]So you're going to have like um the chance that lightning hits a dry area that it hasn't begun to green up, right? We have the chance that um maybe it's later in the day that happens and then it doesn't like just take off as a fire right away. It's like, "Oh, there's some lightning up there but nothing seemed to happen."

[00:04:16]Then suddenly you look up there Tuesday and there's smoke like crazy cuz it's had a few days to cook, right? So that's what I'm trying to set everybody up for.

[00:04:23]I don't think we're going to do a big fire outbreak. No, but we are pushing into temperatures that are 30°. Uh there's a mosquito on my face. We're pushing the temperatures at 30° next week. We're into fire weather. We're into low humidity. We're into active burning conditions and it must be May cuz I got a mosquito flying around my head in my own house. Die.

[00:04:43]Hey, I got him.

[00:04:46]Yeah, take that. And here's the other new app we're going to be using a lot here in the channel. This is wildfire-ready.ca.

[00:04:52]Jeff's still looking for some testing uh help. If you want to go there and get the uh phone version tested. We're going to launch it on May 15th. I'm his weather and wildfire uh yeah, guy. I'm his consultant. So I've done had a lot of say on uh how things work and operate on this site, the size of the fire things, uh whether they're glowing or not and what's going on. We have uh so the fire in Quesnel uh calm today. 56° 9° C up there right now is uh generally, you know, more or less what we're expecting.

[00:05:25]66 hectares still and it's still considered out of control. Our one by Anahim Lake there um is completely under control. We had an incident yesterday in Bella Coola where a 1-hectare fire was because someone was burning. It's 11° C there right now. Very humid, 78%. So that's nice. Great signs. And then uh we'll look at the canyon here. This one has been under control for a few days. It's going to stop flashing on the board soon. Again, 16° C pretty warm already there. 59% humidity though. So we're far away from crossover. Crossover weather conditions are going to happen today though. That is my concern and um we did have some fire activity yesterday.

[00:06:05]Not much though and it hasn't grown at all. 7 uh 7 hectares being held. It's 11° C 46% humidity. So uh he's going to keep expanding this out as we get uh more donors and whatnot. It's going to be a completely free app. He's trying to do it the old-fashioned way through support and whatnot.

[00:06:22]We will keep expanding out into other provinces. And like I'm really proud actually. Here's the other one that's up north right now. This fire up here, fire C or G70141.

[00:06:35]This whole idea of having the crossover, this is one of my big things and we want to add predictive crossover in it so that uh you know, you can kind of scroll ahead for the next few days and see what hours of the day, like the way that we we scroll through our windy map and look at like, "Well, at 2:00 it's going to rain here." And so we'll have the map light up. At 2:00 it's going to be crossover weather. And that will tell us a lot about um you know, what's happening in BC. But there's not much going on this morning. So we're not going to spend as much time on wildfire-ready.ca as we normally will. Soon we'll be looking at this map a ton every day because It can link to It links to the BC Wildfire Service site. Sure, that's the case as well. As you can see here, official incident page under, you know, and then kind of like a whole write-up on all of it. The weather right front and center.

[00:07:21]You got regional news. Uh BX-Swan Lake Fire Department called to something yesterday. Castanet. You have all these wildfire news articles here.

[00:07:30]Uh warm dry April outlook raises wildfire concerns. Prescribed burn for Bull River area. So we're just trying to make one place where you can find road closures, temperature, fire range data, danger ratings, forest fuel types, global wildfires, lightning strikes, live points. That's a brand new one that he just put up there. So that's cool.

[00:07:49]And yeah, you know, we will later today maybe, although I'll be running the fitness test at 1:00, maybe later today be able to come look at this and and uh see if there's lightning going on. The absolute logic is that there's going to be some lightning going on today, unfortunately.

[00:08:05]Uh BC has got the stationary high here.

[00:08:07]So we are in stationary high country.

[00:08:08]You're like, "Oh, well, stationary high.

[00:08:10]It's good news, good news." Well, what's squeezing in the bottom here there?

[00:08:13]Squeezing in the bottom. I think uh this southeast corner is looking a little bit more ripe than maybe we thought. Uh I I had projections. I mean, I still think we're going to see things break out across this line. But I kind of thought some of the worst ones would be in the Kelowna area over to Princeton.

[00:08:29]Uh I'm starting to get the feeling more and more from looking at maps today that we're looking more and more at eastern southeastern BC being really the target.

[00:08:37]So I think the more that you are in this corner, the more of the risk of thunderstorms you're at. But that risk does kind of go along this entire isobar. And I'm not I I don't think that includes necessarily coast. But um you get kind of the idea here, right? And then we saw on uh Adam's uh site there a little bit of tornado risk, slight risk into Florida. Mostly just a thunderstorm risk though. Not much of a severe storm day in the United States today. That's nice. But we can see that thunderstorm risk does go uh basically through Montana uh up and towards the top of Idaho and Washington state and then sneaks into southern BC there. So although we get cut off because the Americans don't want to tell us anything. They don't want to help us out. Which, you know, I think it sucks. Like I think both agencies should have like hundreds of kilometers of overlap. Like we're basically, you know, until you're like so far north in Canada, you know, the American weather service still still paints our side of the border. They're like, "We don't do anything free for Canadians. Become the 51st state." Slight risk of severe thunderstorms across north central Florida peninsula.

[00:09:37]Uh other than that though, nothing severe in America. I don't think we're talking about severe in BC today. I don't know what I mean, it's not that there's not a, you know, a zero chance of severe. I just don't think that's what we're looking at. We're looking really at at uh fire risk from the odd flash of lightning. And again, their fire outlooks, it would be nice if their fire outlooks included British Columbia, but they don't. The big action's down here in Florida and that's how she's going to look. That's how she's going to look. We'll put on fire outlook and see the elevated fire concern actually down and some of the Dakotas and Montana and whatever Wyoming there south of Montana there a little bit into there. So you know, BC we're not in the elevated risk category today. No, we're not going to get that kind temperature. The humidex won't be quite that low, but this does give you an idea that it's rising north first of all. It's warming up. Southern Saskatchewan maybe having a little bit of risk now. Southern Alberta maybe having a little bit of risk. We're going to get warmer and we're going to have some lightning strikes today that adds to the problem. Early afternoon warm in Washington state there 27 Canwick there Kelowna starting to squeeze up to 23 degrees. Nice and warm Prince George, Vancouver even 17 degrees. That's when we see our first risk of the thunderstorms over to Regina, Saskatoon mid high teens there high teens in Alberta at noon today. That well it'll get warmer yet though. We're just starting at noon because that's when our first risk of lightning popping over the border maybe possible sometime around noon or 1:00. That may be early. Perhaps Calgary foothills will see a few flashes. Perhaps Montana will see a few flashes around that time. Washington state yeah even into Oregon good risk of thunderstorm down into Oregon today as well. We're going to hit for another hour here and boom another hour goes by. See storms picking up now in northern California into Oregon here.

[00:11:29]You can see right through large segment of Oregon more and more picking up scattered widely across well, you know, Montana again and Washington state Idaho southern BC.

[00:11:41]We're going to focus on southern BC now.

[00:11:42]Have a look at where they are thinking.

[00:11:44]So again, this model is going to show a little bit different than the other things we looked at so far. Although this corner does look pretty ripe down there southeast Alberta.

[00:11:54]I still think we're going to see a little bit more action here than the ECMWF is giving us warning for. GFS doesn't have a whole lot of data. It doesn't give us thunderstorm icons, but it has the anomaly there icon has the anomaly down the Rockies as well. HRDPS has it kind of spread across the border with a larger signal towards Lethbridge. It thinks maybe Lethbridge might take a thunderstorm today. We'll go back to ECMWF though because it's been the one that uh is giving us the little lightning monitors first of all and uh I think there's a high chance it's correct. I think there's a high chance though that we see this a little bit more into BC side. So I just think everybody everybody south of Revelstoke, you know, in southern BC be aware of that the possibility is there for a few lightning flashes today. And again, these aren't anything crazy. It's nothing big. Uh but the problem is is that we are coming into temperatures that are very warm. I mean that today's not too bad. Today's not too bad, but 25 Celsius if we're at 25 Celsius in Kelowna and then we take the humidex value and add that and go like oh, what's the humidex value at 20%? We're looking at crossover weather today in western Canada. We're looking at fire weather that's active already. So like I've been kind of preparing you for what comes on Tuesday, Wednesday when we really hit the heat, but we're already into it. Okay, Vancouver Island you were at fire risk today. You were in fire weather danger today. It's going to be dry enough. The humidex values will be low enough. Can you imagine that it's May and it's only 30% humidex in Vancouver Island? Now that won't be crossover there for you. Uh fortunately, but still to me anytime your humidex is down to 30% even if the temperature isn't at crossover. And for those of you who don't understand, uh crossover would be if you look here you see Kelowna. I hate to describe this every day, but it's so key for people understanding how fire weather works. Uh see Kelowna's 25 Celsius. The humidex is at 30%. Well, if this temperature goes above this threshold, say the humidex value comes down to 24% or Kelowna goes up to 31° C.

[00:13:51]When this temperature crosses over this weather over this humidex that's when thunderstorm or what's when sorry fires will get very aggressive. Fire likes to breathe dry air. There's a lot to it. I try to keep it as simple as possible for you so you get the basic concept. Now we're not going to be into thunderstorms anymore on Sunday at that point.

[00:14:09]Although we got a low in Manitoba that's going to be making some rain keeping it cool in the north 2° at St. Teresa Point 3° in Thompson unbelievable 18 in Winnipeg. So they're getting some of that. You can see how the warm air is being funneled along the side, but the cold air is being drawn from the north there what lows tend to do. So there we are on Sunday afternoon now at 4:00 in the afternoon. Our temperature looking pretty nice in southern BC. Kamloops now getting up to 27 same with Kelowna very warm in the lower mainland over 25° probably very warm on Vancouver Island even up on the coast.

[00:14:41]There's going to be some very warm It's It's been weird to me seeing how warm areas of the coast get randomly this last couple years. It's weird to me. Not everyone thinks it's that anomalous, but I it's weird to me. It's weird to me.

[00:14:55]Crossover weather the humidex value is below the temperature threshold. Sunday we could see fires be active stand up and do things. And we're it's only going to get warmer. As we get to Monday we go to 3:00 on Monday. You can see the temperatures are spread out pretty nicely. Although there's a bit of a dip going on for everybody in Saskatchewan.

[00:15:12]Sorry about your luck there. The closer you are west though the the nicer it will still stay. So Monday low humidex values and the temperature popping up there pretty good especially on the west side. 29° out there. So Kelowna only 25 like we have a day where it's a little bit cooler in the BC interior. I mean cooler is relative speaking into the 30s down in Canwick there. Is uh this low is just kind of dragging temperatures down in western Canada through the middle of prairie. So as this guy bounces out you're going to see some recovery in your temperatures and whatnot. So Monday yeah, it's not the warmest, but Tuesday we pick really we really pick up. So we go to 4:00 on Tuesday. Now you can see Prince George in the 20s there. 25 in Williams Lake 26 Kamloops 26 Kelowna right? And we'll have a look at our humidex values once again. This is something like I'm trying to trying to do now for wildfire ready app is so that I don't have to like manually go through and be like where is where is it going to be?

[00:16:10]Well, okay Kelowna again humidex value well below the temperature well below the temperature threshold all through the Cariboo. We're looking at crossover fire weather. We're looking at add some wind to this.

[00:16:21]There's not much fortunately. Add a little bit of wind to that and man fires are just going to crank and torch. And it's really the Wednesday is the big day I'm worried about because we were we are going to have the wind and it's going to be warmer. We're going to be up maybe even 30°. It's completely possible someone hits 30 like Kelowna on Wednesday afternoon. And we got a dry cold front coming on through. I think that there may be some thunderstorms associated with this guy, but so far no models show that. So that's nice. We got it looks to be a dry cold front coming on through.

[00:16:49]Temperatures are going to drop pretty good in behind that like you can see Thursday.

[00:16:53]We're not quite as warm. Not quite as warm. Actually it's not that bad. It's not that bad. That's actually an improvement. And look at this. This this could be our first chance of like some actual moisture. So there's a bit of a forecast change there into May 9th where we weren't sure at all if we were going to get any rain for a while. But looks southern BC is not taking much of it.

[00:17:13]Not taking much of it. So what's going to happen on this Wednesday that's coming up next week is this bit of a front is going to pass through I think. And here you can see you know, front is passing through and it's not making much for for rain or anything like that. But what it does do is it might drop our temperatures down for a little bit. Kamloops up to 19 29° that afternoon right? And then you have our humidex values are super low all right?

[00:17:38]17% That's this going to be our worst fire day will be Wednesday. It'll be our worst fire day and then we're going to add the wind gust. Uh-oh spaghetti-oh. We got our first big fire outbreak potential day on Wednesday.

[00:17:49]That's what I would call a red flag warning day. Put it in your calendars.

[00:17:52]Mark it down. Wednesday is going to get possibly bad for any spark that is allowed to manifest in British Columbia.

[00:17:59]So don't be burning things that day. Be watching for your lightning strikes today and be vigilant. Be vigilant. You know, I mean that we've been through worse before and we'll be through worse again. This is just our first good fire day our first actual good fire day of the entire season. Right? We've had fires already this year. I get that.

[00:18:17]But I'm telling you the weather on Wednesday is appearing to me to be that next level thing where we could see any fire that starts that day really take a run and really make a story. Okay, that's the show today. Hit like, share, subscribe. Please support me if you want to keep the channel alive. I'm really fighting to keep doing this and I'm so close to success in so many ways.

[00:18:40]And I just want to just want to keep doing this. I'm I'm old. My body hurts and I want to make weather videos. Okay, that's the show. Bye now.