This fire season is officially a record breaking year for B.C. for the amount of land burned by wildfires.

The total land burned by the 1029 fires that the BC Wildfire Service has responded to this season is estimated at 894,491 hectares.

This number comes after a more accurate reflection of mapping of the growth in fire activity over the past weekend.

The previous record was in 1958 with 855,000 hectares burned.

Kevin Skrepnek of the BC Wildfire Service has said that past estimates of the land burned this year have exceeded the size of the province on Prince Edward Island, as well as the Greater Vancouver area.  

The B.C. wildfires were estimated at 591,000 hectares when they reached the point of exceeding the size of P.E.I. on Sunday, August 6th. The number has now jumped significantly, passing those estimates by thousands of hectares.

Skrepnek said that being that we are only halfway into August, it “wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that number is going to continue to climb.”

This comes after a relatively quiet season last year in comparison, which was 100,000 hectares burned from the 1050 wildfires.

With the expected weather forecast, Skrepnek also said that the possibility of more fires, and a continued challenge in fighting active fires, may persist.

The “silver lining” Skrepnek says, will be that they are expecting to see more seasonal temperatures from this point forwards, and they don’t expect the ridge of pressure the province has been experiencing to return.