An almost completely dry month of February has not alleviated the drought situation currently causing worries in the south of the country, which is already considered to have reached an “extreme” stage across almost all of the Algarve. The lack of rain has further reduced water availability, mainly in the Guadiana Basin, largely affecting the dams in the Eastern Algarve.
Upon analysing the data from the National Water Resources Information System (SNIRH), there is no doubt that the situation in the South of Portugal remains critical, and hasn’t improved. 2If the Algarve and Lower Alentejo were already in moderate to severe drought in January, the fact that practically no rain fell in February meant that the drought worsened considerably last month”, reports the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) today, in its February Climatological Summary.
The lack of rainfall also led to the reservoirs of the various dams in the Algarve to experience a drop in water levels, decreasing to values below those that had been registered in December last year.
In the Algarve, according to the February rainfall bulletin from the National Water Resources Information System, the Albufeira da Bravura meteorological station in Lagos recorded a mere 4.5 millimeters of rain over the past month. At the São Brás de Alportel station, the measurement is even worse, only 2.8 mm of precipitation was recorded.
In the northeast Algarve, more precisely in Martim Longo, the local weather station found that only 0.5 mm of rain fell, when the average was fixed at 58mm. In Lower Alentejo, the situation was not very different. The stations at Relíquias (2.9 mm in February, 90mm average), Castro Verde (3.3mm, 66mm average) and Serpa (2.5mm, 56 mm average) also registered little rain.
In the Eastern Algarve, the Odeleite and Beliche dams, which were previously in a worrying situation, saw their total load drop by about one percentage point. In the first case, the Odeleite reservoir was, at the end of February at 39.2 percent of its total capacity, when in January it had ended up ar 40.2%, and 39.4% in December.
In other words, part of the water accumulated in previous months has already been lost and therefore undone some progress. In December an increase in the level of stored water, in relation to November, was significant, thanks to the heavy rain that fell in the last month of 2019
At the Beliche Dam, the situation was identical. In this case, the total capacity stood at 32.4% in February, when it was 33.3% and 32.6%, in January and December, respectively.
Compared to the situation a year ago, the difference is massive. In February 2019, the Odeleite dam was at 69.4% of its maximum capacity and the Beliche dam at 61.4, in both cases nearly double. Unless the region sees a large amount of rain over the coming spring months, things may not be looking too rosy for the summer.
