We're Wet; But Parts Of The World Too Hot, Too Dry

Residents of Chennai, India queue up for emergency water supplies
as seen in this photo from Reuters. 

After all that rain we had this week, I certainly didn't have to water my garden in St. Albans last evening.

The water content of my garden is the the most trivial thing in the world compared to weather conditions in some parts of the world.  Here's one: A major Indian city is running out of water.

Chennai, India, has about 4.6 million people and a punishing drought, aggravated in the past two or three months by record heat, has shriveled up its reservoirs.

Which means India is faced with an impossible task: How do you supply that many people with water when there's practically none locally?

As CNN reports:

"With low groundwater levels and insufficient rainwater collection systems, the state government has resorted to trucking water directly into Chennai neighboryoods, where hundreds of thousands of residents wait in line for their meager allocations."

Just as climate scientists have predicted, the water shortages have causes public unrest, with fights breaking out for thin water supplies and people hijacking water trucks.

Climate change, which seems to be intensifying droughts and delaying seasonal monsoon rains in India, is only one ingredient to this mess.

CNN reports there's no good infrastructure to store water in Chennai and other areas of India when the rains do come.

Chennai did manage to get 1.14 inches of rain Thursday, but that is as much as they've had in the previous six months combined. For Chennai, that's really not much rain at all. And a lot of that precipitaiton ran off, since there's no good systems to either store the meager rainfall in reservoirs or tanks.

India more than other countries relies on groundwater, and that's been depleting fast. Wells in groundwater aren't expensive, but as we see, combined with drought, this causes water shortages.

Chennai is the third major city in recent years to flirt with entirely running out of water, and it is the worst of the three.

Sao Paulo, Brazil and its 20 million people nearly very ran out of water in 2014 when reservoir levels dipped to 3 percent of capacity. Cape Town, South Africa nearly ran out of water in 2018. 

EUROPE HEAT

It's not drought so much at the moment in Europe as it is heat. A strong blocked up weather pattern seems destined to steer what could be a record heat wave into much of Europe over the next several days. Heat records for the month of June are threatened, notes the Category 6 blog.

Temperatures in parts of Germany, Belgium, France, the Nethelands and other countries could reach 100 degrees.


nearly ran out of water