Hot, dry and windy forecast spells trouble for northern Saskatchewan wildfire fighting efforts

A meteorologist is warning the upcoming endure calculate isn't goodness tidings for the wildfire outlook in northern Saskatchewan, with raging, dry and windy conditions in the foreseeable future.

"We're not getting any relief, unfortunately," said Justin Shelly, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. "We're expecting very warm conditions to continue."

A cold front will develop from Alberta that will move to Saskatchewan on Friday, but it will only create some isolated chances of showers and thunderstorms, said Shelly.

"There's not going to be a lot of accumulations in terms of rainfall amounts associated with this," he said.

Shelly said another system from Alberta will be coming Saturday night into Sunday morning, but most of the rainfall will hit isolated spots of northern Saskatchewan, with only about five to 15 millimetres in those areas.

Ideal weather conditions to help with the wildfires would include multiple days of persistent rain and cooler temperatures without any significant gusty winds, he said.

"Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to see anything like that come up here in the next week or 10 days."

With wildfires continuing to rampage, Regina resident Trevor Phenix went north this week to save his cabin.

Phenix, who owns a family cabin near Besnard Lake, about 560 kilometres north of Regina, already lost the cabin once in 2015 to wildfires and had to rebuild it. He said he had been watching the fire's progress for days and made the call to head up to the area Sunday morning.

"I got a call from my cousin asking if I'd seen the fire map," he said. "I looked at it and it was pretty apparent that the fire was either already at the cabin or was going to be there pretty quickly."

Phenix and his two cousins went up to the cabin with a plan to test and set up more sprinklers and fire pumps.

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On Tuesday morning, they saw a fire within about 75 metres of the cabin. Phenix said he hustled around to make sure the sprinklers were working, and by the time he got to the top of the cabin, the fire had reached the base of the cabin.

"I basically walked up to it already burning and it had started to burn kind of under the cabin," Phenix said. "I grabbed one of the the hoses attached to the sprinkler, move the sprinkler head and went in there and basically doused that as quickly as I could."

Phenix was able to save the cabin after dousing the area with water. 

"We're very fortunate, very lucky."

SaskTel said in a news release Wednesday a wildfire near McLennan Lake, northeast of La Ronge, had damaged fibre infrastructure, causing major network congestion in northern Saskatchewan.

Internet, wireless and landline phone services have been disrupted in several communities, including Southend, Wollaston Lake, Stony Rapids and Fond du Lac, the Crown telecomms corporation said.

Crews are currently unable to access the area and begin repairs due to the fire threat, SaskTel said.

"Customers in the impacted areas may experience slower than usual data services, dropped phone calls, and discontinued data sessions," it said.

Up-to-date info on active fires, smoke and related topics is available at these sources:

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