Current status: We’ve got fires, evacuation alerts, smoke plumes, helicopter and bomber air traffic, lines of backed-up traffic, and a few panicked tourists.

Evacuation alerts (to be ready to go in 3 hours if upgraded to an order):

• West Dawson and the Top of the World Highway to km 36 – details (that’s the area across the river from Dawson City)
• Dempster Highway Cutoff to Henderson Corner – details
• Silver Trail – East of Stewart Crossing, km 8-24 – details

The plume I showed you across the river last night died down overnight and wasn’t visible from town this morning. They had closed the Top of the World highway last night from km 4 to 107 (Alaskan border) last night but were able to open it for few hours this morning, until the fire exploded.

Here’s 10:51am today:

Tourists and their vans and campers and motor homes were backed up from the ferry landing, past the General Store! But they closed the highway again and stopped taking them across on the ferry.

The evacuation alert for everyone living across the river was issued this afternoon and the ferry was limited to just locals-only as people prep for a possible evacuation.

Tonight we went up the Dome to see the sights. There is a big plume from this fire, and two visble plumes east and south. The flames are now cresting a ridge and are visible from the Dome.

It is also the summer solstice, the one night that every tourist tries to come to Dawson to watch the sun set at 12:50am, so town is packed, the Dome is busy with visitors, and some of them are pretty freaked out and don’t know what to do or which way to exit when both ways out of here have fires. There are also a few hundred motorcycle travellers in town for an annual event.

iPhones don’t take great pictures of flames in smoke. At times the smoke was too thick to see the flames, or the ridge, even with binoculars. But each time the smoke cleared a bit, we could see the width of the area with flames get wider and wider.

The flames cresting the ridge are where that darkest smoke is rising.

Soon after I took this picture, our friend Dany had a bus full of tourists up to see the view, and my friends Jim and Janet drove by! But I don’t think they saw us waving?

Not going to lie, it looks a bit ominous from town. A few big ashes landed on me. But it really isn’t that smokey. The smoke is still rising up and over us. So the air quality is pretty good. There isn’t much of a breeze.

Are we in any danger? Shrug. Who knows. Fires don’t move *that* fast up here, the river is really high, and we’re across the river from it. I’m glad we don’t live across the river. If they need to evacuate, that ferry is the only way to cross the river (other than personal boats). But that ridge is at least 10 km away, maybe more.

We had some lightning this evening that sparked a few more fires. The more the merrier.

Right now, we aren’t worried. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!