One of the NWT's top wildfire experts gave us his 2024 forecast

Extremely warm weather is on the way for the NWT, the territorial government says, supercharging an early spring melt as another wildfire season looms.

Territorial fire operations manager Richard Olsen said weather models suggest southern areas of the NWT might experience temperatures "upwards of 10C to 15C above normal" later this month.

"That'll increase the amount of melt and how quickly we get into overall fire conditions outside communities," he said.

That's coupled with an outlook that suggests less rainfall than average through the spring and summer.

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Olsen was speaking at a Thursday briefing designed to provide a guide to early expectations for the months ahead. Winter ends with the southern NWT still in severe drought and experiencing much less snow on the ground than is normally the case.

Similar conditions prevail in northern Alberta and BC, areas that feed rivers like the Hay River running north in the territory. The absence of any meaningful water means only substantial spring or summer rainfall will shift the current South Slave drought.

"A foot to two feet of rain would have to fall" to make a real difference in some areas, Olsen said.

The North Slave, he said, had slightly more snow over the winter than it usually does, but the Dehcho joined the South Slave in seeing less than average.

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"What this means from a fire behaviour perspective is we are still expecting to find holdover fires in the spring. When fires get up and start moving or new fires occur, we'll still see deep-burning fires and the potential for significant and extended growth over periods of time," he said.

"It's safe to say we're looking at going into another drought season for large portions of the NWT and we'll have continued concerns with fires and fire growth.

"The drought conditions are really going to drive a lot of what we're going to see."

At the moment, longer-term forecasts suggest May could be an average one but the territory could be into "high or very high" severity by June.

"There is some hope on the horizon," Olsen said, referring to the expected end of the El Niño weather phenomenon in the months ahead, meaning the NWT might "move back into a normal precipitation pattern" from August onward.

Even so, he said, "significant amounts of above-normal precipitation" will be needed to get the territory back to normal water levels, and this summer's fire season will almost certainly offer at least "three or four months of relatively good burning conditions."

Warnings have circulated for months

The 2023 fire season was easily the NWT's worst on record.

Nearly a year later - wildfires were causing evacuations as early as May last year - conditions across the territory remain dry, with many areas in drought and records being set for low water along some rivers and lakes.

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While four million hectares burned last summer, the territory and its forests are so large that many, many millions more hectares of fuel remain if 2024 is as bad as last year.

NWT Premier RJ Simpson has already warned residents to "be prepared for the worst."

Simpson noted in a February interview that his home community of Hay River had received "barely any snow." Conditions have not improved since, and the town is entering spring having received only around 50 percent of its usual winter snow dump, according to GNWT data.

"We all have a responsibility for ourselves to be prepared," the premier said.

The Town of Hay River has begun sending fire (and flood) preparedness pamphlets to households in the community. A public preparedness meeting is planned for Tuesday, April 23.

Meanwhile, Olsen said the GNWT was aware of preliminary findings from an independent report being compiled into last year's wildfire management. The full report is expected by the end of May.

"Thankfully, nothing was totally unknown" about the feedback received, he said, adding he looked forward to the larger report.

Yellowknife has a wildfire management open house coming up on Saturday, April 27.

On Friday, we'll report on some of the steps the GNWT says NWT Fire is taking to prepare for the season ahead.