A Canadian town’s 20,000 residents have been told to evacuate as strong winds push a raging wildfire towards its outskirts.

Canada continues to battle its worst-ever fire season on record, with 240 fires still blazing in the Northern Territories.

Residents of Yellowknife scrambled to escape as wildfires some 15km away could be seen lighting up the horizon.

The highway out of town became choked as people attempted to escape the approaching flames and thick dark smoke.

Lengthy queues formed at the airport to get aboard emergency flights which were stepped up in the panic.

Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs president Ken McMullen said Yellowknife’s evacuation was the largest this year.

Meanwhile another town, Kelowna, declared a state of emergency and advised residents to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

A wildfire burns on the mountainside above houses in West Kelowna. Photo: AAP

Premier of the Northern Territories, Caroline Cochrane, tweeted that the situation in Canada was dire.

“We’re all tired of the word unprecedented, yet there is no other way to describe this situation in the Northwest Territories,” she posted.

“The country is watching, and our neighbours are keeping us in their thoughts and prayers.”

Canada as a whole has already broken a wildfire record with more than 32 million acres burned so far this year.

The resulting smoke has affected air quality levels as far away as the south-eastern United States and even parts of Europe.

As Canada burns, the people of California in the US were on their first-ever Tropical Storm watch.

Parts of California, Arizona and Nevada were bracing for potentially a year’s worth of rain to be dumped as Hurricane Hilary barrelled along.

Hilary strengthened into a major category 3 storm as it moved towards Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, packing winds of up to 195 kilometres and hour.

It was moving west-northwest and forecast to approach the peninsula — which includes the popular tourist area of Los Cabos — over the weekend, the US National Hurricane Centre.

Additional strengthening is forecast for the next days and the storm likely to become a category 4 on Saturday (local time), it added.

Hilary is expected to dump up to 15 centimetres of rain across parts of the Baja California peninsula through Sunday night (local time).

The heavy rainfall was expected to impact the south-western United States from Friday (local time) through early next week, peaking on Sunday and Monday.