The BC Wildfire Service is warning travellers to check highway conditions and consider the fire risk and the “unbearable” air quality in some parts of the southern Interior.

Fire information officer Noelle Kekula said gusting winds caused huge growth on some of the most significant fires.

“We continue to talk about drought and the conditions that we’ve got going on with the drought and the lack of precipitation that we’re receiving over the summer. So that, in addition to the wind, is a result of the incredibly challenging weekend that we had.”

There are now 18 fires of note in the Kamloops Fire Centre. New fires of note over the weekend started near Brookmere, east of the Coquihalla, and in West Kelowna. Evacuation orders are in place near both blazes and the Central Okanagan Regional District has confirmed structure losses in West Kelowna.

“It is dry, and as everyone saw yesterday with that Mount Law fire in West Kelowna, it went from a spot fire and overnight, we’re estimating it to be about 800 hectares. So that’s how quickly a fire can grow. Literally overnight,” Kekula said.

Kevin Skrepnek, emergency program coordinator with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, said Saturday night in a post online that he had “never been more concerned” than he was for the weather forecast in B.C. for the upcoming 36 hours. Skrepnek is also the former head of communications for the BC Wildfire Service, and was in that role during catastrophic fire years in 2017 and 2018.

“An unprecedented wildfire season, our second major heat event, and the looming fourth wave of the pandemic are coalescing in to one critical period. And: short of a complete and unseasonal weather shift, we have at least another month of wildfire activity ahead of us,” Skrepnek said.

There have now been 767,000 hectares of land burned in B.C. this year. That’s about 107,000 hectares more than what was tallied three days ago.

Based on amount of land burned, this summer is now the fourth-worst fire season on record in B.C., quickly approaching the third-worst season of 1958, when 856,000 hectares of land were lost. The worst season was 2018, when more than 1.35 million hectares of land were lost, followed by 2017 when 1.21 million hectares burned.