Almost three-quarters of England is now officially in drought, authorities confirmed, after the country recorded its driest July since records began. The announcement laid bare the toll of a prolonged spell of hot, dry weather that has gripped the country through the summer. It marks a significant escalation from earlier in the season, when only a handful of regions had been placed under drought status, and underlines how quickly conditions have deteriorated across large parts of the country.
The areas newly declared to be in drought have spread well beyond those first affected at the end of last month. According to the latest assessment, the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire have now joined the list, along with Kent, East Sussex and the Solent and South Downs area in the south. On the map used to track the crisis, the regions still enjoying normal conditions have all but disappeared, swallowed up as the dry weather has tightened its grip region by region.
Behind the declaration lies a remarkable statistic: July was the driest such month for England since records began, with very little rain falling across the country. The lack of rainfall, combined with weeks of high temperatures, has left rivers low and the ground parched. For water resources and for farmers, the record-dry month has been a severe blow, and officials have warned that there is little prospect of significant rain arriving to ease the situation any time soon.
The scale of the change has been captured from space. Satellite images taken in May showed a green United Kingdom and continent, but pictures taken now, three months later, reveal huge swathes of the country turned brown and bone dry. The contrast has been striking on the ground too, with landscapes visibly changing over the course of the summer as the soil has dried out and the vegetation has withered under the relentless heat and absence of rain.
England's dry summer is part of a much wider pattern of extreme heat across the continent. The European Union's climate monitoring programme, Copernicus, reported that around 900 million people across Europe experienced their hottest ever July on record. Globally, July 2026 was the joint second warmest on record, some 1.47 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, with only July 2023 having been warmer, a reminder of how the heat has stacked up worldwide.
The tinder-dry conditions have already fuelled fires. A moorland fire near Ebbw Vale in South Wales has been declared a major incident, with smoke drifting as far away as Gloucestershire and helicopters brought in to douse the flames. Elsewhere, crews have been battling a blaze near a village while working to protect the east coast mainline and stop the fire spreading, as the risk of further major fires around the country remains high with the hot, dry weather set to continue.
Forecasters offered little hope of immediate relief. For most of England and Wales, they said, there is no immediate prospect of a respite, with very little if any rain expected in the days ahead, though Scotland and Northern Ireland may see some wet weather at times. There are tentative signs of more unsettled conditions further ahead into next week, but no guarantee of meaningful rainfall in any particular place, as scientists point to climate change shifting the odds toward the hotter, drier summers Britain has long been warned to expect.