The World Cup Final dodged a huge bullet with this as cold, rainy weather moved into Ontario and Quebec recently and will dampen these effects.
For anyone interested, one of the worst natural disasters in US history were major wildfires in Wisconsin that occurred the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. The news out of Chicago drowned out other news, but the Peshtigo Fire killed approx 2000 people - dwarfing Chicago’s death toll. It’s an insane story
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_fire
“The combination of
topography,
geography, wind conditions, and ignition sources that led to the fire is known as the "Peshtigo paradigm".
[3] The American and British militaries studied the fire during
World War II to learn how to recreate
firestorms during bombing campaigns against cities in Germany and Japan.
[3] Denise Gess, co-author of
Firestorm at Peshtigo, said, "They actually made a 'demo' first, a little scale model of wooden buildings, and studied how you would drop bombs until it created a firestorm. Something that devastating and that hot."
[9]