NEWS UPDATE: At least three provinces fighting forest fires

Ash is raining from the sky, and smoke is blotting out the sun and creating eerie yellow horizons in the western part of Canada as more than 418 wildfires burn.

According to Global News and the Globe and Mail, almost 4,500 fires have burned over 2,150,000 hectares of forest since the beginning of the year.

In British Columbia, Metro Vancouver has had to issue an air-quality advisory and advise those with medical conditions to forgo strenuous activities until it has lifted due to smoke in the city. Evacutaion orders have also been issued in Kootenay, Central Okanagan districts, and the Port Hardy area- which issued a state of emergency on Saturday.

In Saskatchewan, close to one thousand military personel were deployed to help fight the wildfires. More evactuation orders were issued for the La Ronge area, Lac La Ronge and Montreal Lake First Nations. Provincial officials are saying that the amount of land that is normally taken by wildfires is over ten times higher than normal this year.

In Alberta, hundreds of people in the North Tallcree First Nation were forced to flee their homes when the wildfires came within five kilometres of the community, and more in the northern parts of the provence have been put on evacuation alert.

The Globe and Mail reports that the fire is believed to be man-made, and began Friday night on the Tsulquate River, 1.5 kilometres west of Port Hardy. Experts are blaming El Nino for accelerating the fires and dampening efforts to fight them, as it alters the atmosphere and changes weather patterns. While this happens every two to seven years, this year El Nino is reducing precipitation instead of the usual increase in average temperatures.