Hot, Dry Europe Deals With a Punishing Summer

A record-breaking hot and dry summer tightened its grip on Europe on Monday, as water-dropping planes swooped over a major wildfire in Greece, firefighters in France sought to stabilize a blaze in Provence, and much of the United Kingdom recorded its driest July in nearly two centuries. Wildfires west of Athens jumped containment lines a day after a midair collision between two helicopters killed two crew members. In France, firefighters in the region around Bordeaux guarded against potential flare-ups inside a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris, the AP reports.

A prolonged heat wave and lack of rainfall led to the driest July in England and Wales in nearly 200 years of recordkeeping, the UK's weather service said Monday. All of Wales and more than half of England are officially in drought, the Met Office said. The dry spell was accompanied by sweltering temperatures across much of the UK, following heat waves in May and June. Wales tied its record for its highest mean temperature for July, while England and the UK recorded their second-warmest July. Strong winds returned to southern Greece late on Monday, pushing flames into mountain home clusters, destroying farms and property, and closing a highway. Areas surrounding the Greek capital remain at high risk through the week with temperatures set to rise further. More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from around the seaside resort of Porto Germeno and other areas west of the capital—including more than 250 rescued by boats from beaches.

"This is a difficult fire that has troubled us," a fire service spokesman said. Despite improved detection methods and expanded cooperation among European Union members, Greece and other countries along Europe's Mediterranean coast suffer devastating wildfires every summer as spells of heat wave temperatures grow longer. Europe is Earth's fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU's Copernicus climate service. Rising temperatures and prolonged drought leave vegetation drier and more combustible, allowing fires to spread faster and burn more intensely.