Although a welcomed relief for embattled forestry firefighters the return of cool, wet weather doesn’t mean the province’s fire season is over, a fire information officer said Sunday.

“We’ve still got a couple of weeks left in August,” said Elise Riedlinger. “As we get into next week it’s supposed to be hot and dry again.”

There were no new fires reported in the Kamloops Fire Centre on the weekend despite a series of thunder and lightning storms that rolled into the region late last week.

Riedlinger said the only regional fire demanding crews’ attention is the Jade Mountain blaze near Lillooet, which is 50 per cent contained.

The storms cleared away much of the smoke that had settled into the valley from a number of blazes burning in the Cariboo. She said those fires continue to burn.

“The wind played a big part in clearing the smoke,” said Riedlinger.

Some precipitation accompanied the storms. However, there are areas that received little to no rain, she said.

“A lot of places didn’t receive very many millimetres of precipitation in the last couple of days,” said Riedlinger. “There are still pockets of extreme and high fire-danger in a lot of places.”

Gwen Eamer, a provincial fire information officer, said some parts of the Cariboo had between two and five millimetres of rain, which helped calm the fire situation there.

She said 350 fires are currently raging in the province. The number decreased from the more than 400 reported last week.

Like Riedlinger, she hopes the cooler weather doesn’t make people complacent as a return to hot and dry weather is coming.

(Kamloops Daily News)