Our rainy isles have a touch of the dust bowl blues
Not often in this country are we confronted with the strange effects uninterrupted spells of sunshine can play on the landscape, but this week has sounded the first notes of the dust bowl blues.
First, of course, are the wildfires tearing across Saddleworth Moor and elsewhere in the country. Weather Watch was up there in the smoke cloud earlier this week and the expanse of frazzled heather and simmering peat bog stretched as far as the eye could see, which admittedly wasn’t very far at all.
Occurring bang in the middle of the bird breeding season one dreads to think of the environmental impact of it all, when the likes of curlew and lapwing are already battling for survival on the tops of the moors.
On Thursday night a new fire broke out on Winter Hill near Rivington in Lancashire sending more plumes of smoke up over the moors.
Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service says it has dealt with 34 wildfires in the past seven days. As the heatwave continues national parks remain on high alert.
But the hottest days of the year so far have also produced other less destructive weather phenomena.
Dust devils, for example, were spotted at Llandrindod Wells in Powys earlier this week.
Normally more common in deserts, dust devils are caused by warm air rising rapidly from the earth picking up debris with it. In Australia these spiralling vortexes of air are known as spinning willies; in Ireland, by the more poetic fairy winds.
This weekend the weather remains in blue stasis. The high pressure parked over the British Isles is refusing to budge, although come Sunday evening into Monday the forecasters are warning of the risk of thunderstorms.
Risk seems the wrong word to use here. For as well as damping down wildfires and taming dust devils, who among us isn’t secretly thinking that it would be nice to see a spot of rain?