Alberta’s long, cold winter won’t do anything to dampen the 2019 wildfire season, but being extra careful when working and playing in the forests this spring could help, “we aren’t sure what’s coming this year,” said U of A wildland fire expert Mike Flannigan. “With the snow on the ground right now, it’s not going to be a problem for the next while, but we are expecting much warmer weather so the snow could disappear quickly and we might be into fire season quickly.” …“Regardless of how much rain you’ve had or how much snow is melted, if you get a week of hot, dry, windy weather you can have a raging inferno,” said Flannigan, who is director of Canada Wildfire. High levels of precipitation can have a bigger impact on lowlands—wetter, boggy peatlands that make up about 20 per cent of Alberta’s forests—but this winter was very dry, he said.