CHARBONNEAU – Kamloops ranked first at wildfire risk again?

MyCHOICE, A SMALL “insurance tech” company in Toronto, has come out with wildfire risks for Canadian cities again.

And again, Kamloops tops the list.

For a small company, they get a lot of attention. But how accurate are their forecasts?

Let’s see how well they did in 2024. Here are their top five picks:

Kamloops was ranked highest in 2024 with a score of 9.4 out of 10, followed by Saskatoon, Regina, Kelowna, and Medicine Hat.

And here are the actual top five in 2024:

The worst one was in Jasper where 25,000 residents and tourists were evacuated and one-third of the town’s structures were destroyed. It was one of the most expensive natural disasters in Canadian history, with insured damages estimated at C$880 million.

Second was the Donnie Creek fire in B.C. the largest recorded wildfire in British Columbia’s history, followed by the Labrador City wildfire in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Fourth and fifth place were the Parker Lake Fire, B.C. and the Fort McMurray Area Fire.

Zero out of five. MyChoice picked none of the top wildfires in Canada in 2024.

How could they be so wrong? I tried to find out.

It wasn’t easy. They made calculations for each city based on forecasts from a Government of Canada website called Natural Resources Canada Monthly and Seasonal Forecasts.

The first thing I noticed on the site was a disclaimer. The government website states that the forecasts shown are speculative. MyChoice based their forecasts on this. The site says:

“Disclaimer: These forecasts are experimental and have yet to be fully validated and calibrated. These forecasts should be viewed not for their accuracy, but for the general trends they present and are to be used as a long-range planning tool by fire resource managers.”

I found no mention of cities on the site. Nonetheless, this is how MyChoice calculated wildfire risk:

“To determine city-level risk scores, we analyzed two key indicators across the core wildfire season from May to September: the Forecast Severity Rating (FSR) and the Forecast Severity Anomaly (FSA), both sourced from the FSR gauges the predicted intensity of wildfire conditions while FSA compares the forecasted severity to historical norms. Each city’s overall risk score was calculated by averaging the monthly FSR and FSA values from May through September, providing a comprehensive picture of where wildfire risk is expected to be most severe in 2025.”

Seems complicated to me.

Let’s see how well they do in 2025. MyChoice’s top five for this year are Kamloops and Kelowna both with a score of 9.2/10, followed by Regina, Saskatoon, Medicine Hat.

Meanwhile, MyChoice has released other “top 10” studies that don’t seem to draw as much media attention.

There’s the top 10 B.C. cities that are at risk of disappearing due to rising tides. The top five are: Vancouver, Delta, Richmond, Squamish, Victoria.

And there’s the top 10 Ontario Cities for Road Rage in 2025. North York tops the list and the next four are, Hamilton, Brampton, Mississauga, Scarborough.

You can find many other terrific studies on their website.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.