Wednesday, May 31, 2023

2023 Wildfire Season: Nova Scotia Wildfires (May 31st)


Direct link to video from Global News on YouTube

On Saturday night, May 27th, I heard from a friend who lives somewhere in the vicinity of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He told me about a wildfire that had started that same day. He saw flames and smoke from the wildfire as he was riding to work on Saturday night. He went on to tell me that the fire was threatening residential areas. On Sunday, I went and checked the Nova Scotia Division of Natural Resources and Renewables Twitter account but did not find reports of the size of the fire my friend told me about until May 29th, more on that later. 

Unless otherwise noted, I accessed all of the embedded tweets from the Nova Scotia Division of Natural Resources and Renewables Twitter account.

I want to start by acknowledging that according to a news release from the Nova Scotia Government there are at least three wildfires in Nova Scotia, including one that has burned 19,000 hectares (about 46,500 acres).


I believe that wildfire that my friend was telling me about is the wildfire that is burning in the Tantallon-Westwood Hills area of Nova Scotia. According to a May 30th update from the Nova Scotia Government this fire had burned 788 hectares (about 1,947 acres). Mandatory evacuations orders are in place.


For a sense of geography, I saw these maps in another Tweet by the  Nova Scotia Division of Natural Resources and Renewables of the 19,000 hectare wildfire in the Barrington area and the 788 acre fire in the Tantallon area.

I did some more searching because I wanted to find a map that showed where the wildfires were on a map of the Province of Nova Scotia. Thanks again to CBC who reported on the locations of the wildfires with maps.

Finally, here is a May 31st report on the Tantallon-Westwood Hills wildfire from CBC News Nova Scotia

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