FireSmoke Canada
Welcome to the Canadian portal for information and resources about smoke from wildland fires. We provide access to services and data for professionals in the air quality, health & safety, emergency management, and science & research communities as well as the public. We are also a community of practice that advances policies, plans & organizations to address wildland fire smoke issues.
Our primary service is smoke forecasts from wildland fires using the BlueSky Canada system. This system produces forecasts of hourly ground-level concentrations of PM2.5 smoke particles from wildfires up to two days into the future.
News
Service Interruption
October 7, 2020. There will be a firesmoke.ca service outage on Saturday, October 17, 2020 from 07:00 to 16:00 Pacific Time due to network maintenance. We recommend you load a smoke forecast into your browser on Friday, October 16 if you need one during the interruption.
October 7, 2020. There will be a firesmoke.ca service outage on Saturday, October 17, 2020 from 07:00 to 16:00 Pacific Time due to network maintenance. We recommend you load a smoke forecast into your browser on Friday, October 16 if you need one during the interruption.
HTTPS Available
April 1, 2020. A secure, encrypted version of this website is now available at https://firesmoke.ca/. For legacy compatibility reasons, the original unencrypted HTTP site will remain operational, and it will not be automatically redirected to the HTTPS site.
April 1, 2020. A secure, encrypted version of this website is now available at https://firesmoke.ca/. For legacy compatibility reasons, the original unencrypted HTTP site will remain operational, and it will not be automatically redirected to the HTTPS site.
New Forecast Viewer
May 15, 2019. A new and improved forecast viewer has been released. Improvements include new basemap layer choices, better playback controls, a new fire outline overlay, new hotspots marking and clustering, an opacity control for the smoke layer, and a sidebar with comprehensive forecast and help information. Concurrently, we also simplified the forecast graphics to use six levels to make it easier to see transitions and to make the PM2.5 values relate to national exposure standards. You can see the new viewer by visiting the current smoke forecast.
May 15, 2019. A new and improved forecast viewer has been released. Improvements include new basemap layer choices, better playback controls, a new fire outline overlay, new hotspots marking and clustering, an opacity control for the smoke layer, and a sidebar with comprehensive forecast and help information. Concurrently, we also simplified the forecast graphics to use six levels to make it easier to see transitions and to make the PM2.5 values relate to national exposure standards. You can see the new viewer by visiting the current smoke forecast.
New Forecast Colour Scheme
April 3, 2019. We have switched to a YlOrBr (yellow orange brown) colour scheme to display the different levels of PM2.5 on our smoke forecasts. This was done to improve accessibility for colour blind users and to improve contrast between levels when viewed in grayscale. Here is the new forecast legend we are using:
April 3, 2019. We have switched to a YlOrBr (yellow orange brown) colour scheme to display the different levels of PM2.5 on our smoke forecasts. This was done to improve accessibility for colour blind users and to improve contrast between levels when viewed in grayscale. Here is the new forecast legend we are using:
