Hurray, the drought is officially over in Portugal!

[Module 79L]

After 11 months of little or no rain, all it took was one rain-filled March to bring things back to normal and even beyond normal. It was the 2nd rainiest March since 1931, with an average of 272mm, just 2mm less than the record-holder year of 2001.

Take a look at the comparison between the situation at the end of February and at the end of March:


Here's the chart of the drought evolution since April 2017. The numbers are the percentage of the territory affected:


It has kept raining so far this month of April and there's more rain forcasted for the rest of the month, although not as frequent or as heavy as during March.

Another "mind-blowing" thing that happened in March: at the end of last year, the Government ordered the hydroelectric power plants to reduce the production by 50% due to the very low water levels in the dams and we had to import electricity to compensate for this reduction. The dams' situation improved a bit in January, so in the first week of March the limitation was lifted. Mid-March we beat our previous energy production record (from February 2016) and at the end of the month, for the first time ever, the energy produced by our renewable energy sources exceeded the county's needs, "fuelled" by both the hydroelectric and wind power productions!

 

[kamkar]

Lets just hope it dont start all over in 2 months.

 

[Module 79L]

Lets just hope it dont start all over in 2 months.

Not likely, according to the weather forecasts for April and May. As you can see in the chart, by this time last year we were already in dire straits. Many dams and water reservoirs have already exceeded their annual average water levels, so even if it doesn't rain the whole Summer we'll have enough water to last until the next Autumn/Winter and beyond.
After what happened last year I noticed a greater awareness for this problem, not only in the domestic consumers, but also in the local and central State authorities, regarding water usage in public gardens, fountains and drinkers.

 

[kamkar]

Well i am all for we northerners get the heat this summer and then you can get the wet summer like we had last year.

We do have restrictions on water usage here in strong summers, but its not like your garden get burned and fade, but if you water it must be done at night when the evaporation are lower.
We dont have many rivers where farmers can take water from, actually i dont even think that's allowed.
We do have more and more ground water resources that get too polluted by the insane use of fertilizers years ago, right now its especially some fertilizer used back then in relation to growing turnips and similar.
Now Danish farmers are banned from using as much chemicals as farmers elsewhere in the EU, that's also why corn grown up here have far less protein content than corn grown in a place with higher use of fertilizers.

But we Danes like to over implement rules / restrictions, or maybe its other EU countries that's reluctant to see the error of their ways, and dont want to implement the strong rules that are actually needed.