(Updated Sept. 4, 2025 with enhanced NASA images, the MODIS picture of the day, replacing earlier live image from Worldview)

Double trouble for Kitimat on September 2, 2025.

There were apocalyptic skies with heavy smoke looking like a J. M. W. Turner painting.

The heavy smoke came from two sources. The winds are blowing smoke from Cariboo and interior wild fires toward the coast.

At the same time, LNG Canada posted “LNG Canada advises that an unplanned flaring event occurred September 1st at approximately 8 p.m. resulting in a flare height of approximately 60 metres overnight, with associated visible emissions.”

On the afternoon of September 2, 2025, the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of smoke pouring from wildfires in British Columbia. Most were burning within the western part of the Cariboo Region, which spans 8.2 million hectares (20 million acres) of the province’s central interior.

The Itcha Lake fire, toward the top-right of the cluster of fires shown above, was among the region’s largest, having burned around 17,000 hectares as of September 3. The Beef Trail Creek and Dusty Lake fires also spanned a substantial area, having burned around 7,800 and 2,800 hectares, respectively. The Ulkatcho First Nation and Cariboo Regional District issued an evacuation order for people in the vicinity of the Beef Trail Creek fire.

According to an August 27 report from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System, British Columbia has seen 732,000 hectares burned so far this year, which is slightly higher than the 10-year average. In contrast, the burned area has soared above the 10-year average in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which so far have seen around 2.9 million and 2.1 million hectares burned, respectively. According to news reports, the nation is experiencing one of its worst fire seasons on record, trailing only 2023 in terms of area burned.