Storms, wildfires and heatwaves blast Europe ahead of summer getaways

Daily Mail​

4 days ago

Europe is in the grip of an unforgiving bout of extreme weather that is battering popular holiday destinations just as British tourists prepare to head abroad for the summer. Searing heatwaves, devastating wildfires and violent storms are sweeping the continent, threatening lives, scorching landscapes and putting emergency services under immense pressure.
Tourist hotspots in Italy and Spain are contending with several punishing blazes, with hundreds of firefighters and water-carrying aircraft dispatched to quell the flames. Greek authorities meanwhile are warning residents and holidaymakers to expect a week of hellish warmth, with the mercury expected to peak at 43 degrees Celsius in parts of the country. The Hellenic Meteorological Service issued public health warnings this morning, declaring temperatures would linger between 38 and 40 degrees C today and increase well beyond that throughout the week.
Similar temperatures are present throughout Turkey and southern Italy. Elsewhere, France and Germany are facing a contrasting crisis as punishing storms and torrential downpours tear across towns and cities, felling trees, ripping off rooftops and flooding roads. Spain is struggling to quell a series of wildfires that have already burned through 70,000 hectares of land in recent weeks.
On Friday, the skies above Madrid turned an ominous shade of orange as the Spanish sunshine illuminated a blanket of smoke drifting across the capital from nearby forest fires. Authorities say more than a dozen localised fires are currently raging, with high temperatures, intense winds and persistent drought having turned the country into a 'powder keg'. Several regions were placed under a very high or high warning level by the Forest Fire Potential Spread Index (FPI) published this morning, with Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Toledo and Castilla-La Mancha thought to be under threat.
It comes as a fire in Toledo was extinguished overnight. The Italian island of Sicily is also battling six separate wildfires, with soaring temperatures leading authorities to issue red alert warnings for four provinces this week. Sicily's Forestry Corps and Civil Protection workers were engaged all weekend as they worked to extinguish the fires, with six water-dropping aircraft drafted into control the flames.
Three of the blazes are located in the northwest in the countryside between the cities of Palermo and Trapani, with two more reported along the south coast and another in the suburbs of the eastern city of Catania. Horrifying images snapped overnight by residents in Trapani showed thick orange flames scything through bone-dry hills on the outskirts of the city. This morning, meteorologists placed the eastern provinces of Catania, Caltanissetta, Enna and Messina under red alert warnings, with emergency services preparing for the prospect of yet more infernos.
These warnings come amid an intense heatwave engulfing southern Europe as winds bring subtropical air from northern Africa to southern Italy and Greece, according to meteorologist Giulio Betti. As Spanish and Italian emergency services battle the wildfires, Greek meteorologist Clearchos Marousakis said parts of his nation will experience 43 degrees Celsius heat, and said the mercury could go even higher. Marousakis said the 'ceiling' of this week's heatwave 'is estimated at 41 to 43 degrees Celsius inland'.
He added that the heat wave 'will be intense and long-lasting' and will be accompanied by high winds along the coast. Greek emergency services will therefore be on high alert for more wildfires, weeks after Crete and several other parts of the country were overwhelmed by infernos that triggered evacuations of some 5,000 people. Those punishing blazes sparked in the mountains between the villages of Ferma, Achila and Agia Fota on July 1 and were whipped up by powerful gusts.
Evacuations were ordered at three sites outside the port of Ierapetra on the island's south coast as the inferno raged out of control overnight and by Wednesday afternoon was threatening to engulf residences and tourist resorts. Around 230 firefighters were dispatched to contain the fires along with 10 water-dropping aircraft to fly regular sorties over Crete, with reinforcements sent from Athens. The president of a hotelier's association told Protothema that 5,000 people - mostly foreign tourists - were moved out of homes and hotels, while dozens were taken to hospital with respiratory issues triggered by thick clouds of smoke and ash.
Wildfires have burned more than 227,000 hectares of land in Europe since the beginning of the year, according to the EU's European Forest Fire Information System - far above the average figure for the first six months of the year. It's not yet clear if 2025 will be a record year, as that will depend on how the fire season evolves in the coming months, but the number of fires in Europe has also surged this year so far, with 1,118 blazes detected as of July 8, versus 716 in the same period last year, EFFIS said. Countries are preparing for worse blazes.
Warmer-than-average temperatures are forecast across Europe in August, EFFIS said, meaning fire danger will remain high across much of southern and eastern Europe. While Southern Europe is expected to see normal rainfall patterns, the rest of the continent is expected to be drier than normal in August, EFFIS said - potentially exacerbating fire risk in other regions. While Italy, Spain and Greece battle wildfires and scorching heat, residents in France and Germany are facing a very different problem.
Brutal storms engulfed much of eastern France over the weekend with one person killed and six more injured amid the violent weather events. The roofs of several houses were torn off in the department of Saone-et-Loire, north of Lyon, such was the intensity of the winds and the lightning storms. One person attempting to make repairs to his roof was killed when he was blown off a ladder, while in nearby Jura, almost 5,000 people were left without power. Another person was seriously injured in Devrouze when he too was blown off a roof, and five more people were hurt in the Alpine department of Savoie when a tree was felled and landed on a car.
Meanwhile, the German Weather Service (DWD) this morning issued a string of weather alerts for much of the north and southeast of the country, warning of heavy rainfall and the prospect of flash floods. DWD meteorologists warned residents could expect to see up to 100 litres of rainfall per square metre over a 12-hour period later today, with winds reaching 80 kilometres per hour.