Entire town of Summerland, B.C, flees aggressive wildfire Friday evening | #wildfire

All of it.Canada's priority fires right now are burning within British Columbia.And the latest news out of British Columbia is the wildfire in Summerland, BC.This is an area with a population of about 12 ,000 people, and there is now an evacuation order in place.

It was issued very late Friday into the early morning hours of Saturday.This fire grew rapidly in size, with officials on the ground reporting that some of the embers were being thrown about a kilometre away from this fire.

Now, the fire has reached Highway 97.Officials are urging people with extreme urgency to get out of this region.This is the Bald Range wildfire.It's a story we continue to follow.Of course, the weather is not helping this situation at all.Very dry conditions.

We've seen windy conditions, too.

The winds as we go throughout this afternoon are expected again to reach about 40, maybe even 50 kilometers an hour.So that wind does help push those embers and unfortunately grow these fires.Now when it comes to the air quality, a wide blanket of air quality warnings are in place.They're starting now to creep into Alberta.Even a place like Calgary will start to see poor air quality as we go throughout this weekend.But some of the worst air quality for sure within the Okanagan Valley, within the Thompson Valley.

You can see Vancouver You're being spared the worst of the air quality because the way the wind is pushing everything over towards the east.I'll just show you this board here because it shows you some of the air quality numbers going through Saturday.Remember, when plumes of smoke come throughout your region, these numbers can rapidly change.And I do want to mention too that this smoke is being pushed countrywide, even into the Great Lakes by the time we get into Sunday.Not likely to affect air quality for people in Ontario.in the sky is going to become very noticeable, especially with sunrises and sunset.

Now let's go back to the wind.The wind within British Columbia, likely to see some wind gusts that could reach 50 kilometres an hour.This is not what we need in the forecast because again, that is what rapidly grew this fire in Summerland, throwing those embers so far.The ground is so dry, the region desperately needs rain.And by the way, if you're wondering where Summerland is, it is about 40 minutes south of Kelowna.So again, this is a region where we weren't seeing huge fire headlines just about 48 hours ago.

But now, yesterday and into today, it certainly is a huge headline for B .C.fires and an area of extreme urgency.Now, when it comes to rainfall, We do have very low confidence that rain will be beneficial throughout this weekend.

Unfortunately, the pattern that we're in continues to remain so dry.There are small chances of a shower, but then of course you mix the smoke in with that as well.Sometimes that really helps to stop the potential of any pop -up shower that we might see.

The greater risk for rain is really up towards the north when we desperately need it down towards the south.Now I want to show you the seven -day forecast here.This shows you Kelowna becoming warmer over the next few days.29 degrees on Tuesday and then you see the chance for rain here Wednesday and Thursday.But again, focus on this.The probability of precipitation only at 30, so that is of course very low Whistler.

You can see here the seven day forecast looking to be quite dry with a low probability of precipitation.