60 Fires In Scottish Highlands Alone; Of 47 Rivers Surveyed, One At Normal Flow - aka. "Spring"

Well, I suppose, if you wait long enough, a barbecue spring – if not yet a summer – will eventually turn up, like the number 11 bus. And it has arrived with a vengeance. Two years after the Met Office made its ill-fated prediction, and as these normally damp islands swelter in temperatures that have at times outstripped the Sahara, cookouts have been one of the causes of the wildfires that have set much of the country ablaze.

Tinder-dry after months of low rainfall, our heaths, moors and forests from Sussex to the Scottish Highlands, from Norfolk to Northern Ireland, have burst into flames in a rash of outbreaks more typical of arid Australia or Greece.

Firefighters have battled 60 blazes in the Highlands alone – including one half a mile wide at Balmoral – while the National Trust for Scotland reports £100,000 of damage to its land in Wester Ross. Schools were closed and homes evacuated as flames tore through Berkshire's Swinley Forest, home to the rare Dartford Warbler, while local naturalists say a swath of Poole's priceless Canford Heath will take up to a quarter of a century to recover. Barbecues have been identified as one of the causes, along with discarded cigarettes and outright arson.

The hope is that thunderstorms – brought about by warm, moist air from Spain – will douse the flames over the weekend. And the Met Office is predicting further unsettled weather after a month dominated by a huge high pressure area parked west of Britain; like a boulder in a stream, it has diverted our usual procession of westerly-borne depressions north and south. After the hottest April since records began, this will come as something of a relief. On Easter Day, Wisley in Surrey – at 27.8C – was hotter than the Morrocan village of Merzouga in the Sahara. Less than a quarter of the average rain fell in England and Wales last month (under 10 per cent in the home counties), following the driest March in half a century: over the past six months, it is almost a third down on the long-term average.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/8499192/Forest-fires-Britain-bursts-into-flames.html