GLOBAL WEATHER HIGHLIGHTS

AUGUST 2025

CANADA

Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos, and stern warnings from officials have become fixtures of Canada’s wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction.  Instead, the worst of the fires has been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat that is only likely to grow as the climate warms.  Experts say the shift serves as a stark reminder that the risk of disaster is present across the thickly forested nation.  In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes due to the wildfires. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been the worst hit, covering more than 60% of the area burned in Canada. But the fires have also strained resources in Atlantic Canada, where officials in Newfoundland and Labrador are struggling to battle out-of-control blazes.  In response to the crisis, the Newfoundland premier, John Hogan, said on Wednesday morning he would temporarily ban off-road vehicles in forested areas because the province “simply cannot afford any further risks, given the number of out-of-control wildfires we have”.  The ban follows a similar move by Nova Scotia, where a 15-hectare (37-acre) out-of-control fire is burning outside the provincial capital, Halifax. In addition to barring vehicles in wooded areas, Nova Scotia officials so shut down hiking, camping, and fishing in forests, a decision reflecting the troubling fact that nearly all fires in the province are started by humans.

ASIA

The death toll from heavy monsoon rains that have triggered flash floods across northern Pakistan has risen to at least 321 people in the past 48 hours, the country’s disaster authority said on Saturday.  The majority of the deaths, 307, were recorded in the mountainous Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.  Nine more people were killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, while five died in the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, it said.

At least 56 people have died and 80 are missing after a sudden rainstorm in Indian Kashmir, the second such disaster in the Himalayas in a little over a week. The incident in the town of Chashoti, Kishtwar district, occurred at a stopover point on a pilgrimage route. Days earlier, a flood and mudslide engulfed a village in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.  The flood washed away a community kitchen and a security post in the village, a pit stop along the pilgrimage route to the Machail Mata temple, according to an official. “A large number of pilgrims had gathered for lunch, and they were washed away,” they said.  The Machail Yatra trail is a popular route up to the high-altitude Himalayan shrine of Machail Mata, which honours the Hindu goddess Durga, and pilgrims trek to the temple from Chashoti, where the road for vehicles ends.  “The news is grim and accurate, verified information from the area hit by the cloudburst is slow in arriving,” Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of India’s federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir, said in a post on X.  Television footage showed pilgrims crying as water flooded the village.  Mohammad Irshad, a top disaster management official, said 56 bodies had been recovered from the site before rescue efforts were halted for the night.  He said 80 people had been reported missing and 300 had been rescued, 50 of whom were severely injured and had been sent to nearby hospitals.  The disaster occurred at 11.30 am local time, Ramesh Kumar, the divisional commissioner of Kishtwar district, told ANI news agency, adding that local police and disaster response officials had reached the scene.  “Army air force teams have also been activated. Search and rescue operations are underway,” Kumar said.  A cloudburst, according to the Indian Meteorological Department, is a sudden, intense downpour of more than 100mm (4in) of rain in just one hour that can trigger sudden floods, landslides, and devastation, especially in mountainous regions during the monsoon.

Unusual levels of rainfall are due to hit the southern Arabian peninsula this week, as a tropical wave – an elongated area of low pressure – progresses across the region, triggering a marked increase in convective activity across western Yemen and south-western Saudi Arabia this week. There is a risk of thunderstorms until Wednesday, with forecast rainfall totals reaching about 50mm for Al Hudaydah region in Yemen and the Jazan province of Saudi Arabia.  Although 50mm is not a particularly large rainfall total in most places, in this region it is enormous: Al Hudaydah typically records only 65mm annually, while Jazan averages about 150mm.  Orographic enhancement – when air rising over mountains or other upland terrain can invigorate or produce areas of heavy rain – along the Red Sea coastal escarpments further amplifies the risk of high rainfall totals here and this, combined with the arid surface conditions, brings a significant risk of flash flooding; runoff from upland rainfall is efficiently channelled into valleys, often toward more densely populated coastal settlements.  Hail and strong outflow winds are likely from these thunderstorms, with the outflow winds potentially producing short-lived but impactful intense dust storms owing to the dry desert terrain, leading to sudden reductions in visibility and localised transport disruption.  While the impacts are likely to be reserved for the Red Sea coast, there is a suggestion that moisture transferred from the Arabian Sea in association with this tropical wave could extend further inland, with the potential for rare rainfall within the Rub’ al-Khali (Empty Quarter) desert.

EUROPE

Tourists who hoped to idle on Croatian beaches this week will have instead burned their feet on scorching sand. Families on a break in Madrid will have choked on smoke from a deadly wildfire that ripped through a suburb of the Spanish capital. Visitors to Mount Vesuvius in Italy will have been turned away from the trails as firefighters battled blazes on the volcano’s slopes.  And then there are campers in south-west France, where 40% of selected weather stations had 40 °C on Monday, who may have wished they had stayed home.  Fierce heat is scorching southern Europe for the second time this summer, breaking temperature records and fuelling wildfires that have forced thousands of people across several countries to flee their homes.  The heatwave, which has been made longer and stronger by the blanket of fossil fuel pollution that smothers the Earth, has struck during the holiday season when tourist-dependent economies in the Mediterranean and the Balkans are most exposed to variations in weather.  For locals and visitors alike, the formerly Instagram-friendly views now seem apocalyptic. Firefighters are tackling fierce blazes in countries from Portugal to Turkey, and the infernos are known to have killed people in France, Spain, Albania, Montenegro, and Greece.  Across the continent, black smoke is darkening blood-red skies.  “We are being cooked alive,” said Alexandre Favaios, the mayor of Vila Real, in northern Portugal. “This cannot continue.”  Wildfires in Europe burned more than 400,000 hectares in the first seven months of 2025, according to data published by EU fire scientists on Tuesday. Although it is not the worst the continent has seen for this time of year, the burned area is 87% greater than the average over the last two decades.  In the coming week, the scientists warned, “extreme to very extreme conditions” for fire weather will persist. They project “particularly severe” risks in much of southern Europe, as well as high anomalies in parts of the Nordics.  “We are at extreme risk of forest fires,” the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned on Tuesday. “Please be very cautious.”

Extreme heat is breaking temperature records across Europe, early measurements suggest, and driving bigger and stronger wildfires.  In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angoulême, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion, and Saint-Girons. Météo France said the “often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures” in the region were 12 °C above the norm for the last few decades. In Croatia, air temperature records were set in Šibenik, at 39.5°C, and Dubrovnik, at 38.9 °C, while large forest fires raged along its coasts and ripped through neighbouring countries in the Balkans.  The day before, Hungary broke its daily maximum temperature record when a weather station in Körösladány hit 39.9 °C. The capital, Budapest, also broke its daily maximum record as it sweltered through 38.7 °C heat.  Beyond Europe, dozens of temperature records were broken across Canada, and record-breaking heat above 50 °C in Iraq was blamed for a nationwide blackout.  The heatwave in southern Europe comes as Nordic countries recover from unprecedented temperatures above 30 °C in the Arctic Circle this month.

Tourist trails have been closed on Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy as firefighters tackle a huge blaze on the volcano’s slopes, while officials warned of another “challenging day” for those working to contain France’s biggest wildfire since 1949.  The wildfire on Mount Vesuvius, close to Naples, broke out a few days ago and by Saturday afternoon had stretched to about 3km (1.9 miles) wide, destroying hundreds of hectares of woodland and killing wild animals. Thick smoke could be seen from Pompeii and Naples.  Six Canadair firefighting planes have been dispatched from the state fleet, and teams made up of firefighters, soldiers, forestry corps, police, and civil protection volunteers from across Italy are working on the ground.

Network Rail Scotland said wind gusts reaching 90mph from Storm Floris have disrupted train services. A map shared on X showed areas with the highest wind speeds recorded, including one recording of 90 mph. The rail company said the west of Scotland had been particularly affected by disruption by 10 am.  These are the wind speeds we're seeing at 10:00 across Scotland's Railway as the storm moves in.

UNITED STATES

Two wildfires burning in the western United States – including one that has become a “mega-fire” on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon – are so hot that they are spurring the formation of “fire clouds” that can create their own erratic weather systems.  In Arizona, the wind-whipped wildfire that destroyed the Grand Canyon Lodge is 9% contained and has charred more than 164 sq miles (424 sq km) to become the largest fire now burning in the continental US and one of the top 10 largest in recorded Arizona history. Getting around it would be roughly like driving from New York City to Washington, DC. Another large fire in Monroe, Utah, has burned 75 sq miles (194 sq km) since 13 July and is 11% contained, officials said on Thursday. Evacuation orders were issued on Wednesday for several towns in the fire’s path, and scorched power poles caused electricity to be shut off in other nearby communities in south-central Utah. Spencer Cox, Utah’s governor, declared an emergency on Thursday as wildfires grew around the state and planned to visit Monroe on Friday.

TROPICAL

Hurricane Erin has intensified into a category 5 storm as it churns its way over the Atlantic, brushing past islands in the north-east Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center (NHC), in Miami, said on Saturday that Erin, which it described as “catastrophic,” was still not expected to hit land in the US and would swerve away, but forecasters have warned that strong winds and heavy rain could cause flooding and landslides on nearby islands.  At the time of publication, the storm was 105 miles (170km) north-east of Anguilla, recording maximum wind speeds of 160mph (255km/h). It was moving west at 17mph and was expected to pass near the Leeward Islands on Saturday, bringing 2-4in (5-10cm) of rain to some areas, with up to 6in in the heaviest downpours.  The storm’s outer bands of rain were beginning to affect some islands, and more rain was expected on Sunday, NHC forecasters said.  “Swells generated by Erin will affect portions of the northern Leeward Islands, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and the Turks and Caicos Islands through the weekend,” the NHC said.  The swells would spread to the Bahamas, Bermuda, and along the east coast of the US early next week, it said, warning of rough ocean conditions and “life-threatening” rip currents.  The winds had more than doubled in speed in the past 24 hours, from a 70mph tropical storm on Friday to a 145mph category 4 on Saturday.

Vietnam has evacuated more than half a million people as it braces for Typhoon Kajiki, which, at the time of writing, is forecast to make landfall near the city of Vinh on Monday. Boats and flights have been cancelled in preparation for the typhoon’s impact. Kajiki developed into a typhoon on 23 August as it travelled across the South China Sea. It continued to strengthen, with sustained winds reaching more than 100mph (160km/h), as it travelled just to the south of Hainan, an island province in southern China. A red alert was issued for Hainan, which is the highest alert level in China’s warning system.  The typhoon is expected to bring more than 300mm (11.8in) of rainfall to parts of Hainan and Vietnam on Monday, causing flooding that is likely to have a severe impact on farmland. On Tuesday, Kajiki is forecast to rapidly weaken as it travels inland across Vietnam and Laos owing to the lack of warm seas required to fuel the storm.