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With fires burning across 11 states, from Arizona to Wyoming, it already
looks as if this year’s fire season will be the worst in the US for fifty years.
An unusually dry, hot spell has turned lush forests into tinderboxes, and a
series of lightning storms has set off several vast conflagrations. Nearly 2
million hectares of woodland have been burnt so far. And with high pressure
fixed over the Rocky Mountains, the forecasters expect the weather to stay hot
for the next week.

You can keep up with the latest news of the fires—and even offer to
help fight them—at the National Interagency Fire Center’s website at
www.nifc.gov. You can also find a map showing the location of the main fires on
the site.

Fires flourish where the vegetation is dry. The US Department of
Agriculture’s Wildland Fire Assessment website has a useful rundown of the main
risk factors at www.fs.fed.us/land/wfas/welcome.htm/. Unfortunately several of
the links to maps weren’t working when Netropolitan tried them, but the maps of
greenness give a fair idea of the scale of the problem. Despite the heroic
efforts of firefighters, some fires are still raging out of control and the best
hope in many places is for rain. You can check out the prospects for a change in
the weather on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s storm
prediction site at www.spc.noaa.gov/productsfire_wx/.

The Mediterranean has also suffered badly this year. A series of fires
swept Greece in June, burning a fifth of the island of Samos and—on the
mainland—threatening Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic games.

The Global Fire Monitoring Center, part of a UN programme for reducing the
consequences of disasters, keeps an eye on fires around the world
(www.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/welcome.html). Among the site’s regional reports
you will discover that the number of fires in Greece has diminished since June
because of an increase in humidity—so your holiday’s probably safe.