Fire officials hope they can get the largest wildfire ever recorded in Canada's Atlantic Coast province of Nova Scotia under control, with rain on Friday and a rainy forecast for the weekend.
That wildfire and three others in the province have prompted air quality warnings in U.S. regions as far south as Virginia and Maryland.
My weather app says there is a 80% chance of rain. Halifax's mayor, Mike Savage, posted an Instagram tribute to Giddy up to that.
The Barrington Lake fire in Nova Scotia is now considered the province's largest wildfire on record. The blaze has a maximum of 200 square kilometers, more than 75 square miles in Shelburne County, and remains despite round after round of water-bombers and air tankers dropping water and fire retardant from the cloudy skies.
But rain is forecast for that area and for the province's capital, Halifax, where another wildfire has forced the evacuation of thousands. The wet weather is forecast to continue from Friday through Monday and Tuesday next week.
We re really hopeful with this break in the weather that we can really get in and do some positive work, said Dave Rockwood, Public Information Officer for the Natural Resources Department.
He said he was quite hopeful that a much smaller fire near the town of Shelburne, where 1,300 people live, could end soon.
I ve never been so happy to see rain, Halifax Fire Department deputy fire chief David Meldrum said. It is not enough yet, he said, but officials were hopeful about the current forecast.
More than 5,000 people have been forced from their homes and cottages since Sunday, and 50 of them have been consumed by flames.
It was unusually dry in Nova Scotia's spring. In April, the province received about half of the usual amount of rainfall, according to the Earth Observatory of the US space agency Nas.
Some residents of subdivisions north-west of Halifax have been told that their homes were destroyed by the fast-moving fire earlier this week.
Fire officials said 200 structures, including 151 houses, were claimed by the fire in suburban Halifax, which has been burning out of control for nearly a week. In all, 16,000 Halifax-area residents have been evacuated from their homes.
Fire officials said 50 percent of the Halifax fire had been contained, though it still was out of control. No injuries or missing people have been reported in the fire, the mayor of Halifax said.
US officials reported that as far south as Pennsylvania, Baltimore, Virginia and Maryland were affected by the Canadian wildfires.
The National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, issued an air quality warning for the Richmond, Virginia area on Friday due to smoke from wildfires across the north-east and Atlantic Canada.
St Mary's County Emergency Department, located about 80 miles south of Washington DC, said residents in a tweet on Thursday that air quality might be impaired by the fires in south-eastern Canada.
In Pennsylvania, the Chester County health department said in a tweet that the smoke haze from wildfires in Canada continues to linger and warned that the air could still be unhealthy for older adults, young children and people with respiratory problems.
The National Weather Service in Baltimore-Washington and the Philadelphia region, including parts of New Jersey, issued similar warnings to sensitive groups, warning them to take precautions when going outside. A thick plume of smoke has been reported over Cape Cod, Massachusetts.