There is no single definition of drought, but it usually refers to a period of prolonged unusually dry weather that can have impacts on people, nature and the environment.<\/p>\n
Last month, England and Wales saw the driest July since records began in 1836 – while for southern England, it was the driest month ever recorded.<\/p>\n
River levels have continued to fall after less than 10mm of rain across England for the seventh consecutive week.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency has warned that low water levels have resulted in potential navigation issues for boats on the Thames, Lark and Ouse.<\/p>\n
Reservoir levels have also continued to decline, with almost all across England below normal and five classed as “exceptionally low”, according to the agency.<\/p>\n
The National Farmers Union (NFU) has warned that continued dry weather could lead to some food shortages.<\/p>\n
NFU president Tom Bradshaw said yields of wheat and oats were “very, very poor” this year and warned livestock farmers have had to use their winter feed rations because they have been unable to grow grass.<\/p>\n
The week ahead is forecast to remain mostly dry, with temperatures soaring across much of England and Wales.<\/p>\n
Temperatures will peak on Thursday before dropping slightly over the weekend – and for England and Wales, there is no significant rainfall expected in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, said the UK is “not prepared at all” for the prolonged dry weather.<\/p>\n
She told Today: “We’re seeing right now with the impacts on farming from this drought and the extreme heat we’re experiencing, our infrastructure, our agricultural sector and lots of areas of the economy are not really ready for the weather we now have and how that weather will change up to 2050.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no single definition of drought, but it usually refers to a period of prolonged unusually dry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-733333","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\/733333","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=733333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}