New footage of the extreme wildfires in Canada from the air has been shared on TikTok, where it has been viewed more than 1.8 million times.
On August 18, 2023, a state of emergency was declared. A mass evacuation was ordered in and around Kelowna, a city straddling both sides of the Okanagan Lake, in the south of Canada’s British Columbia province.
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TikTok user Isaac Miller, who has the handle @miller8144, posted a video yesterday of footage from an airplane window over 37,000 feet above Kelowna on August 17, a day before the evacuation of the area was ordered.
In the clip, smoke billows among the clouds, showcasing the huge impact of the devastation below ground.
Canada is enduring its worst wildfire season on record as fires rage throughout the country. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) said there are 1,041 active fires across the country as of Monday.
Among these active fires, 661 are listed as out of control, with a further 157 being held and 223 listed as under control. While these blazes are found across much of Canada, British Columbia has been most heavily affected, with 377 active fires.
Canada’s official National Preparedness Level has been at 5 since May 11, 2022. Under level 5, the CIFFC says that “potential for emerging significant wildland fires is high to extreme and expected to remain so in one or multiple agencies.”
West Kelowna fire crews have confirmed that 50 structures, including homes, have been fully or partially destroyed in the McDougall Creek fire in west Kelowna. Hundreds of firefighters from Mexico and South Africa are set to arrive as smoke continues to engulf the area.
In thousands of comments on Miller’s video of the above-the-ground footage, people have shared their shock at the billowing smoke that filled the sky.
“Unreal. What a scary sight. Godspeed Kelowna,” posted user Crystal.
“That’s insane,” commented bustawe. “I live in British Columbia and seeing this point of view is crazy.”
Other viewers of the video were confused about how different the smoke looked in the clip in comparison to what they had seen before. Some described the effect as “like cauliflower,” and others even wrote: “that’s not smoke.”
The reason for the different appearance of the smoke is thanks to changes in perspective, lighting and the behavior of smoke particles at different altitudes.
NASA explains that smoke particles disperse more as they ascend into the upper atmosphere, causing plumes to appear less dense. The distance between the smoke itself and where the video was filmed from adds to this effect, while thinner air in higher altitudes scatters the sunlight to give a different coloring to smoke—adding to the difference in appearance.