Blazes burning with the intensity of ‘atomic bombs’: Europe enters a new era of mega fires
CNN
By Laura Paddison, CNN
(CNN) — The vast blazes ripping through southwestern France burned so intensely they created a powerful, fire-generated thunderstorm. This rare phenomenon is sometimes seen in the kinds of megafires that afflict the US and Canada, but was unprecedented in France, until now — and it’s just one sign that Europe is entering a new fire era, experts say.
Europe has always had wildfires, but they are becoming increasingly extreme as the climate crisis tightens its grip. Firefighters in France and Spain have this week been trying to tame blazes more ferocious and more erratic than anything they’ve tackled before.
On Wednesday, authorities in Spain and France said that some wildfires had been stabilized, but expressed concern that things could still deteriorate amid Europe’s fourth heat wave so far this year.
The European Union has also warned there is a risk of fires further east in Greece and Italy.
This all follows from Europe’s record-breaking fire season last year, with experts saying the continent is joining a long list of regions — from Siberia to the Amazon — which now endure back-to-back extreme fire seasons.
“We have entered an era of fires that cannot be extinguished,” said Víctor Resco de Dios, lecturer of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida in Spain. “These are fires that burn with the intensity of several atomic bombs.”
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Wildfires in France have now scorched more than 160,000 hectares (about 617 square miles), making them the largest on record for the country, and there are still months of wildfire season left.
“The situation we face today is the hardest we’ve ever recorded, the hardest since the Second World War,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday on a visit to Bordeaux. He called the fires “totally unprecedented.”
One of the most visceral examples of this was the appearance of fire clouds, or “pyrocumulonimbus,” which formed over the weekend in the Gironde region, near Bordeaux, according to fire authorities.
Fire clouds emerge when particularly intense wildfires generate a plume of extreme heat, which rises rapidly into the cooler air above and condenses into towering thunderstorm clouds. These can create their own wind, rain and lightning and transform blazes into erratic and unpredictable self-feeding firestorms.
The phenomenon is well documented in Australia, Canada and the US — the Los Angeles fires in 2025 produced a rare tornado, or firenado — but they are not at all common in Europe.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said it could not yet say for certain this was France’s first pyrocumulonimbus. “However, if confirmed, its development would highlight the exceptional intensity of the current fire and the extraordinary atmospheric conditions under which it is burning,” said Francesca Di Giuseppe, the center’s fire forecast coordinator.
The scale of the fires is also remarkable, experts said. They have scorched huge tracts of land across France and Spain, both of which have requested EU assistance. “A synchronized, multinational wildfire crisis is rare in Europe,” said Stefan Doerr, director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University in Wales.
The fires have raged near major cities, including one which has torn through the mountainous province of Avila, west of the Spanish capital Madrid, and is now the country’s largest on record, authorities have said.
“What is uncommon is the current number of destructive wildfires: fires that spread rapidly, overwhelm fire brigades and force communities to evacuate,” said Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London. More than 300,000 people have been evacuated across the two countries so far, though some were able to begin returning to their homes on Wednesday.
Wildfires in Turkey have also begun to pick up. Authorities said fires have spread in agricultural and forested areas of the southwestern Mugla province on the Aegean coast.
In neighboring Greece, at least three firefighters have been killed: Two while battling flames on Crete and a third while tackling a blaze in Gythio, the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA) reported, citing the Greek Fire Service officials. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his condolences to their families, saying his thoughts are with all first responders on the frontlines. An evacuation order was issued for Triopetra on the southern coast of Crete, according to AMNA.
Complete suppression of fires of this magnitude is almost impossible until the fuel runs out or persistent rain arrives, no matter how many firefighting resources are mobilized, experts say.
“In Australia, parts of the US and Canada, there is a general expectation and acceptance of out-of-control wildfires,” said Swansea University’s Doerr. “In Europe there is still a widely held notion that such fires can be entirely prevented.”
Why are these fires so bad?
Each wildfire is complex and unique and affected by many factors, including land management, terrain and firefighting resources. But extreme weather, made worse by climate change, has been a key driver of Europe’s fires, scientists say.
Global warming is bringing stronger swings between wet and dry extremes. It’s a “whiplash effect,” said Matthew Jones, an independent research fellow at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in England.
Last winter was unusually wet in France and Spain, leading a surge in vegetation growth. Then the weather flipped. Since May, Western Europe has been roiled by a succession of brutal heat waves, which parched the landscape. This heat provided “the ‘crack of the whip’ in the whiplash effect, turning that dense vegetation into highly combustible fuel,” Jones said.
‘Dantean scenarios’
Extinguishing the current fires completely may take months, authorities have said, but their impacts will linger long after that.
The hazardous, smoke-filled skies they produce are harmful to health. Pollution from wildfires is estimated to cause more than 100,000 deaths globally every year.
There’s also the damage to economies. These fires are raging near major European cities, affecting tourist hotspots, wine-growing regions and vital defense hubs.
More than that, they may change people’s relationship with the land they live on, now they find themselves under the constant threat of uncontrollable fires.
Into the future, scientists say we should expect fires — in Europe as elsewhere — to become more frequent and more extreme as long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and push up temperatures.
“It’s difficult to predict how far things might go,” said Resco de Dios, “we will soon be unable to rule out Dantean scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, with fires or fire complexes reaching hundreds of thousands of hectares or even a million hectares.”
CNN’s Catherine Nicholls contributed to this reporting.
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