Britain has experienced its eighth warmest summer since 1884 thanks to record-breaking June temperatures, the country’s national weather service said on Friday.

The Met Office said the average mean temperature during the meteorological summer season was 15.4 degrees Celsius (59.7 degrees Fahrenheit), around 0.8 C warmer than average.

It was also a wetter than average summer, however, the wettest of the ten warmest summers on record. The Met Office said provisional data showed July this year was the UK’s sixth wettest July on record.

Despite the high average temperature, the highest individual temperature recorded was 32.2 C, far below the record of 40.3 C reached last year.

Greece on Friday rescued a group of 25 migrants trapped in a wildfire which has been burning in the northeastern region of Evros for almost two weeks, authorities said.

The wildfire in Evros, Europe’s deadliest this summer, burned for a 14th day after killing at least 20 people, destroying homes and livelihoods and scorching lush forests.

All but one of the dead in the Evros fire are believed to have been migrants who crossed over from Turkey, evading police in the forest. Evros is a popular crossing into the European Union for thousands of migrants and refugees every year.

Aircraft and hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze in the Dadia Forest amid fast-changing winds on Friday.

A Reuters video showed migrants sitting on a road next to a field, with trees engulfed in thick grey smoke in the background, before authorities drove them away on an open-backed truck.

“While operating between the villages of Giannouli and Dadia, 25 people were found and taken to a safe place by the fire brigade and police,” Greek fire brigade spokesperson Ioannis Artopoios told Reuters.

The migrants were all male and said they were from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, a police official said. The official said they were arrested.

The Copernicus Emergency Management Service said the Evros fire had ravaged at least 812.6 square kilometres (313.8 square miles), larger than New York City’s 778.2 square kilometres (300.5 square miles).

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said at least 30% of Greece’s protected Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli Forest had been burned.

Australia recorded its warmest winter on record, its weather bureau said on Friday ahead of a widely anticipated decision over whether to declare El Nino conditions, which typically bring hotter, drier weather.

The June-August season’s national mean temperature was 1.53 centigrade above the 1961 to 1990 average, and the highest since records began in 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said on its website.

Winter rainfall across the country was meanwhile 4.2% below the 1961 to 1990 average, although the northern parts of Western Australia state, western Queensland and large parts of northern and eastern South Australia bucked that trend.

The end of an unseasonably hot southern hemisphere winter sets the stage for the potential declaration of El Nino. The Bureau of Meteorology has previously said the weather pattern is likely to develop between September and November.

El Nino is associated with extreme weather phenomena, from wildfires to tropical cyclones and prolonged droughts.

The World Meteorological Organization said last month the weather pattern had emerged in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has so far only issued an El Nino alert, which it says has historically led to the event around 70% of the time.

The Asian financial hub of Hong Kong and the Chinese province of Guangdong cancelled hundreds of flights and evacuated nearly 800,000 people Friday as the imminent arrival of Typhoon Saola forced closures of businesses, schools and financial markets.

Packing winds of around 200 kph (125 mph), the super typhoon could make landfall late on Friday or early on Saturday in Guangdong, and rate among the five strongest to hit the populous province since 1949, authorities have warned.

Across Guangdong, 785,155 people had been evacuated from high-risk areas, while 13 cities delayed the start of the school term on Friday following the summer break.

In Hong Kong, more than 300 people were stranded at the airport by the cancellation of about 460 flights as the city of 7.5 million people raised its hurricane warning to the highest level.

“It’s very sad for me because I am not able to attend my daughter’s oath-taking,” said a tearful Ledenila Barizo, 54, who had been due to fly to the Philippines, as she paced in front of the airline desk.

The weather will deteriorate rapidly as the typhoon makes landfall, Hong Kong weather officials said, with storm surges of about 3 metres (10 feet) higher than the normal tide and maximum water levels reaching a record.

Weather authorities in China have said Saola could make landfall along the coast between the cities of Huidong and Taishan. Hong Kong and Macau lie in the centre of that stretch.

Saola is one of three tropical cyclones to have formed in the northwest Pacific Ocean and South China Sea. The second, Haikui, is approaching Taiwan, and is set to hit the island on Sunday before heading towards China’s province of Fujian.