By Paul Homewood

It is worth taking a look at two EFFIS wildfire graphs for the UK, which that Telegraph article referred to.

Firstly, the cumulative fire area stats for this year have been skewed upwards by big fire day on 8th April, which accounted for 18000 ha, more than half the YTD of 35000 ha.

https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/apps/effis.statistics/seasonaltrend

Most of that day’s fire total was accounted for by a series of gigantic fires in the Mountains of Mourne.

The Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service reported that “a significant number were started deliberately:

https://www.nifrs.org/public-urged-to-act-safely-and-responsibly-to-reduce-wildfire-risk/

As with the rest of the country, N Ireland had a very dry March, but no drier than several others in the past:

Secondly, the Telegraph grossly misinformed readers by suggesting that worse is to come this summer.

In reality, fire activity has flattened off since the end of April as it usually does each year.

There is a good reason for this – by May grass is growing and greening again, making it less combustible:

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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June 21, 2025 at 09:13AM