Three of the Fifteen Largest EU Wildfires Since 2016 Burned in a Single July

Three wildfires that broke out within days of each other in Spain and France in July are among the fifteen largest recorded in the European Union since 2016, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, which works from satellite imagery.

The largest fire in Spain's recent history began in the province of Avila, west of Madrid, on 22 July. Still burning, it has scorched almost 44,000 hectares, making it the sixth largest recorded in the Union in the past decade. A second fire, in Guadalajara province east of Madrid, has burned more than 33,000 hectares and now ranks fourteenth.

France entered the same table with its largest fire since 1949, burning near Bordeaux from 22 July and now considered stabilised. It destroyed more than 38,000 hectares, which places it eighth in the Union over ten years.

Three entries in a fifteen place ranking, all from one month, is the detail that should travel. A record year is weather. A record fortnight repeated across two countries is a fire season behaving differently from the one European civil protection was built for, and Italy sits in the same climatic neighbourhood.