Storms boost reservoirs and ease nationwide drought
Thursday, February 1, 2018 @ 1:01 PM
RECENT storms sweeping Spain have helped ease the drought a little – reservoirs were down to under 37% full at the beginning of 2018, but are now up to 42%.
The last week alone, which brought a cold front from the Atlantic with snow in the centre and north of the mainland and torrential rain and gales on the east coast, has seen reservoirs rise by 0.4%, or a total of 23,487 cubic hectometres.
Although relatively little and still well below the amounts needed to guarantee a water supply 24 hours a day for the entire population this summer, it is still the eighth increase in a row, says the ministry of agriculture.
Downpours this week left up to 85.5 litres of rainfall per square metre (8.55 centimetres, or 3.36 inches) in the province of Alicante especially, one of the areas of Spain which most suffers from the drought and typically sees less annual rainfall than in the Sahel strip of the Sahara desert.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com