The beginning of the driest hydrological year in the province of Alicante since 1869. This is the warning being issued by the Spanish Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in its latest assessment of the weather situation in Alicante and across the Valencian Community.
They report of a drought situation that will continue for the foreseeable future, as there is no rain forecast during the remainder of the week.
While in the north of the country, the latest rainfall is boosting the reserves, the situation is critical in the Segura basin, where stocks stand at just 19.1 percent. This is one of the lowest levels across the whole of Spain.
Those areas that are below the Segura at the moment are the Guadalete-Barbate basins (14.5 percent) and the internal basins of Catalonia (17.1%) , according to the latest information issued by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
At the beginning of 2023, Alicante and the Valencian Community had an “exceptionally dry” period, especially the March-April two-month period, “which was the driest since records began. Unfortunately, this exceptional spring dryness has been repeated in the last quarter of the year.
Aemet highlighted that the meteorological situation is going from extreme to extreme; while 2022 was the wettest year since 1989, 2023 has been the driest. “They have been the two most extreme years of the century (the wettest and the driest have occurred consecutively),” they point out.
The Segura Hydrographic Confederation has recently begun to apply restrictions to irrigation in the face of the drought.
