The 2024 Ontario forest fire season officially comes to an end on Thursday. This year saw a total of 479 fires reported province-wide, burning nearly 90,000 hectares of forest. Of those, 218 fires were in the northwest, said Chris Marchand, fire information officer with Aviation, Forest Fire and Emergency Services. “Certainly it falls well below the 10-year average, which is about 694 fires,” Marchand said. “If we look to last year, we finished the season with 741 wildland fires, which impacted 441,000 hectares.” “Consistent and widespread spring rains across the province largely reduced our early spring fire danger,” he said. Fire activity did pick up toward the end of the season, thanks to dry conditions from late August to October, Marchand said. “The most active areas that we saw in Ontario in terms of forest fire activity remain, for the most part, in far northwestern Ontario,” said Geoff Coulson, warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada.