More than 900 wildfires are burning across Canada, covering roughly 3 million hectares of land — an area larger than Belgium — as of late July 2026. Smoke from these fires has traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and reached northern Europe.

Canada's fire information system, run by the federal government, showed active fire conditions on July 23, 2026. The most worrying fires are in the Northwest Territories and Ontario, where several fires are still out of control. Smoke has also blown into the United States.

On July 18, Canada's Natural Resources Department counted 69 new fires in a single night, bringing the national total to 955. By July 20, Ontario alone had 190 active fires covering 735,000 hectares, up from 650,000 the weekend before. The town of Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories was ordered to evacuate on June 28, though that order was lowered to a less urgent alert on July 18. Ontario declared a fire emergency on July 15.

The Guardian reported on July 24 that more than 900 fires are burning, though it did not specify its data source. A separate agency, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), publishes daily updates during fire season, including reports on aircraft deployed and which fires are the top priorities. Its last summary page update was July 8.

In a very different part of the world, the city of Salta in Argentina recorded its warmest-ever overnight temperature on Saturday, July 18, 2026 — the temperature never dropped below 26°C (79°F). This happened during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when Salta's normal nighttime low is about 3°C. The previous record was 22.2°C, set back in January 1953 during summer.

The cause was a weather event called the Zonda wind. This happens when air flows east across the Andes mountains and then sinks down the other side. As the air drops, it gets squeezed and warms up — similar to how a bicycle pump feels warm when you compress air inside it. This warm, dry air then reaches the surface. A developing El Niño — a natural climate cycle where the eastern Pacific Ocean gets warmer than usual, which can shift weather patterns around the world — may have made this Zonda wind event stronger than normal.

In the Pacific Ocean, a storm called Tropical Depression 11 formed on Tuesday, July 21. It grew into Tropical Storm Noul north of the Philippines on Thursday night, July 23. Forecasters expected Noul to strengthen into a typhoon (the Pacific equivalent of a hurricane) and hit China's southeast coast on Sunday morning local time as a category 1 storm.

The broader context here is that having major wildfires in northern Canada, record-breaking winter heat in Argentina, and a strengthening storm in the Pacific all at the same time shows how different parts of the global weather system are under strain this July.

The Zonda wind event is especially notable because it happened in winter, not summer, and was likely connected to the El Niño developing in the Pacific. This is an example of what scientists call teleconnection — the idea that what happens in the ocean in one part of the world can trigger unusual weather on a continent thousands of miles away, like a domino effect stretching across the globe.