The skies were frequently darkened thousands of miles away as Canada burned like in no other year prior during the modern record.
Data is often highly variable, and wildfires are no different. Despite the variability, records tend to cluster. That may be a sign of just how hard it is to get the all-time high, or the biggest snowfall. Same can be said for acres scorched.
2023 left mouths agape for months on end as the country burned from coast-to-coast. The final tally of 17,347,637 hectares (42+ million acres) ended up beating the old record of 7,105,998 hectares in 1995. Average at the time was a bit north of 2 million hectares per year.
I wrote dozens of articles about it and watched the smoke come in waves from Washington, D.C. It felt like the biggening of something new. I hope it was not.
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