Wildfires, heat, ice and storms: Canada feels weather wrath in 2025
2025 was another weather-intense year in Canada--marked by damaging wildfires, heat, drought, and destructive ice and storms
It's been another year dominated by wildfires in Canada, a season that ended up becoming the country's second-worst on record.
Second only to the destructive, record-breaking 2023 season, 2025 was still quite damaging, with more than 6,100 wildfires burning at least 8.3 million hectares across the country. Numerous blazes led to evacuation alerts that forced thousands to flee their homes.
SEE ALSO: Should Canada sprint to replant trees after intense wildfire years?
Aside from a destructive wildfire season, Canada experienced several other impactful weather events in 2025, including a prolonged, historic ice storm that caused millions of dollars in damage and left hundreds of thousands without power for days and weeks in many areas.
As well, parts of the country were buried under record snowfall from November 2024 to March 2025, or sizzled under record heat, or endured extended drought, or saw damaging thunderstorms.
Mount Underwood wildfire in B.C. in summer 2025. (BC Wildfire Service)
Below is just a selection of some of the top weather stories in Canada in 2025.
Wildfires dominates the headlines in 2025
Significant wildfires flared up across the country, with notable blazes in B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories. Parts of the Maritimes were also impacted, with trail closures and fire bans in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
June 2025 wildfire in Manitoba. (Government of Manitoba)
Record heat in the Northwest Territories in May sparked a wildfire season that persisted for more than four months, devastating Manitoba and Saskatchewan. States of emergency were declared and tens of thousands evacuated.
Meanwhile, wildfire smoke stretched across the country--even reaching European skies.
Prolonged ice storm wreaked havoc in Ontario
More than one million people were affected by the multi-day, late-March ice storm. Freezing rain fell in parts of Ontario for an extended amount of time as a slow-moving Colorado low crept in.
Freezing rain fell for 21 hours in Ottawa, 26 hours in Sudbury, and a staggering 35 hours in Trenton, Ont., allowing ice to build to an incredible thickness in some areas, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).
Orillia, Ont., ice storm damage in late-March 2025. (Nathan Howes/The Weather Network)
Barrie, Ont., saw 15 millimetres of ice buildup, 19 mm was documented in Orillia, Ont., 20 mm was penned in Peterborough and Harrowsmith, Ont., and a whopping 25 mm was recorded in Lindsay, Ont.
Multiple states of emergency were declared due to the damage and power outages, including the cities of Orillia and Peterborough, Ont., the District of Muskoka and the Township of Oro-Medonte.
Snow, thunderstorms and flooding also caused trouble in parts of Canada
Not long before the ice storm, Orillia and Owen Sound, as well as other snowbelt communities near Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, had just came out of a near-record snowfall season that endured from late fall through winter.
Jan. 2, 2025 snow squall in Orillia, Ont. (Nathan Howes/The Weather Network)
The year 2025 will go down in the memory banks, in the Great Lakes basin for the massive snowbanks. The lake-effect snow machine hit Orillia hard in January and February, especially, setting a monthly record for snow in the city and shutting down highways through cottage country.
Southern Quebec and Ottawa weren’t spared, either. Montreal saw a four-day snowfall record around Valentine’s Day, and a parking garage collapsed in Ottawa at the end of February.
Severe thunderstorms battered the Prairie provinces on Aug. 20, bringing large hail, damaging winds, flooding rains, and a tornado. One of the storms carved a swath of destruction reaching more than 400 kilometres of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Sumas Prairie, B.C.. flooding in B.C. (David Hodge/The Weather Network)
In the weeks before Christmas, a series of atmospheric river events took aim at the West Coast, leaving flooding and widespread travel disruption in their wake. Abbotsford, B.C., found itself largely under water with the worst flooding it had experienced since 2021.