Wildfires create fire clouds in Europe

Fire-breathing dragon scorches Europe - 3rd August 2026

Wildfires raging across France and Spain have led to the evacuation of over 375,000 people. As the climate crisis sparked a series of extreme heatwaves affecting western Europe, they've caused unprecedented destruction.

42,000 hectares of the Gironde department in France have been torched, equivalent to four times the size of Paris. Meanwhile, Spain's lost 170,000 hectares to fire since the year began - 6 times the area destroyed in 2025.

Although 90 percent of wildfires are attributed to human activity, a combination of meteorological events has fuelled the flames, as an unusually wet winter, causing higher-than-average vegetation growth, was followed by exceptionally dry spring weather.

The climate crisis is heating Europe more quickly than other continents and the record-breaking run of heatwaves has turned lush vegetation into bone-dry kindling, ready to feed any fire. From 2015 to 2025, the average temperature was 0.87 degrees Celsius higher than the baseline average in the 30 years from 1991 to 2020.

Teresa Ribera, European Council Vice-President's stated Europe "needs to do more, and faster, to prepare for extreme weather events like wildfires and floods."

Firefighters in France warn the blazes are so ferocious it could take months to entirely douse the flames. They've generated the first pyrocumulonimbus (PyroCb) clouds over France, referred to by NASA as the "fire-breathing dragon of clouds".

PyroCb clouds form when wildfires are extremely intense, as the fire plume rises until low atmospheric pressure causes its air to cool. Water vapour condenses onto ash and as ice particles collide at high altitude, this generates thunder and lightning strikes.

The updraft in PyroCb clouds makes fire spread up to five times faster. The downdraft creates erratic ground-level winds which spread fires unpredictably, carry embers further and spark new blazes up to 100 kilometres away.

With parts of the Gironde just 9 kilometres from Bordeaux engulfed in flames, air tankers and a military cargo plane are dropping fire retardant in the hope of forming a fire break. Should the 70-kilometre-wide inferno threaten the city, over 1 million people could face evacuation.

Meanwhile, although fires near Madrid are still "out of control", the authorities are "cautiously optimistic" about operations to damp them down.