SIRMIONE, ITALY (AP) – Italy’s worst drought in decades has reduced Lake Garda, the country’s largest lake, to near its lowest level ever recorded, exposing swaths of previously underwater rocks and warming the water to temperatures that approach the average in the Caribbean Sea.
Tourists flocking to the popular northern lake found a vastly different landscape than in past years. An expansive stretch of bleached rock extended far from the normal shoreline, ringing the southern Sirmione Peninsula with a yellow halo between the green hues of the water and the trees on the shore.
Northern Italy hasn’t seen significant rainfall for months, and snowfall this year was down 70 per cent, drying up important rivers like the Po, which flows across Italy’s agricultural and industrial heartland.
Many European countries, including Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Britain, are enduring droughts this summer that have hurt farmers and shippers and promoted authorities to restrict water use.
The parched condition of the Po, Italy’s longest river, has already caused billions of euros in losses to farmers who normally rely on it to irrigate fields and rice paddies.
To compensate, authorities allowed more water from Lake Garda to flow out to local rivers – 70 cubic metres of water per second. But in late July, they reduced the amount to protect the lake and the financially important tourism tied to it.
With 45 cubic metres of water per second being diverted to rivers, the lake was 32 centimetres above the water table on Friday, near the record lows in 2003 and 2007.
Garda Mayor Davide Bedinelli said he had to protect both farmers and the tourist industry. He insisted that the summer tourist season was going better than expected, despite cancellations, mostly from German tourists, during Italy’s latest heat wave in late July.
“Drought is a fact that we have to deal with this year, but the tourist season is in no danger,” Bendinelli wrote in a Facebook post.
He confirmed the lake was losing two centimetres of water a day. The lake’s temperature, meanwhile, has been above average for August, according to seatemperature.org.
On Friday, the Garda’s water was nearly 26 degrees Celsius, several degrees warmer than the average August temperature of 22 degrees Celsius and nearing the Caribbean Sea’s average of around 27 egrees Celsius.