Moscow is burning

Deaths in Moscow have doubled and are now averaging 700 people a day amid a sweltering heat wave and poisonous smog from wildfires, a top Russian health official said Monday.
Scorching heat and acrid smoke blanketed Moscow as smog from raging forest and peat fires shrouded Russia’s capital for a third week.
“The average death rate in the city during normal times is between 360 and 380 people per day. Today, we are around 700,” Andrei Seltsovsky, Moscow’s health department chief, said.
Firefighters battled wildfires covering 1,740 square km in what the chief state weather forecaster said he believed to be Russia’s worst heat wave in a millennium.
Alexander Frolov, head of Russia’s weather service, said judging by historic documents, the heat wave could be unprecedented in up to 1,000 years. “Our ancestors haven’t observed a heat like that within 1,000 years,” Frolov said. 
*Indianexpress.com*

Much of western and central Russia is suffering through a severe drought, thought to be the worst since 1972, in what has been the hottest summer since record-keeping began 130 years ago. This year’s harvest was already in trouble, and the fires have finished off vast fields of golden wheat and other crops.
Temperatures have topped 95F (35C) for much of the past three weeks, with an all-time high of close to 100F (38C) recorded in Moscow last week.
*Telegraph.co.uk*

Flames travel along the floor of the forest near the town of Voronezh Photo: AP/Mikhail Metzel