Relative humidity (RH) and temperature play a large role in the moisture content of available fuels, affecting the fire weather indices that indicate intensity, ignition, and spread potential of wildfires. However, the magnitude of increase in RH and decrease in temperature necessary to impact intensity and ignition potential is dependent on many additional factors including aspect, altitude, wind speed, atmospheric stability, fuel loading, fuel structure, and moisture content of the fuels.

Previous research completed by FPInnovations investigated the logistics and equivalent rainfall produced by the cannons investigated in this study (Refai & Hsieh, 2021). However, little is known about how much these systems influence the local atmospheric conditions on a large scale. To gain further knowledge on the topic, FPInnovations and Fire & Flood, a service provider of area-based high-volume water delivery solutions, collaborated to trial their 12-inch system. For the trial, 14 water cannons were spaced out on a harvested farm field ~9 km south west of Penhold, Alberta