The combination of low rainfall and prolonged high temperatures – meaning greater evaporation of moisture – has quickly depleted water reserves in soils, vegetation and rivers. <\/p>\n
This has led to a “flash drought” – where drought conditions begin quite suddenly rather than over many months or years.<\/p>\n
Paul Tompkins, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales (NFU), said: “Farmers and growers have always had to contend with the weather, but what they are experiencing now is climate change in action. More extreme conditions [are] making it harder, riskier and more costly to produce the nation’s food.”<\/p>\n
He added the issue of drought is something that “should matter to everyone” as it affects the country’s food security. <\/p>\n
Today’s announcement means there have been three droughts in the past five years \u2013 2022, 2025 and now 2026.<\/p>\n
Some areas of the country are now entering their fourth heatwave of the year. <\/p>\n
And on Wednesday, the Met Office announced that the new June temperature record set last month, was even higher than previously thought, following verification processes.<\/p>\n
The previously-reported figure of 37.7C in Lingwood, Norfolk, on 26 June 2026 has been updated to 38.0C \u2013 smashing the UK’s previous June high of 35.6C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The combination of low rainfall and prolonged high temperatures – meaning greater evaporation of moisture – has quickly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-717239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}