Are you in a drought zone?

Well it seems that despite all the rain that we have had in our department (Indre) we are now in the most severe crisis red level…
It’s true that although the vegetation ( weeds especially) is flourishing the nappe aquifère here has diminished.
I have a ‘source’ here under the house, there are others nearby, that "feeds’ an ancient well, lavoir, my étang and runs into a stream in the park. Although it has never ‘run dry’ I did notice that last summer it was the lowest I have ever seen it.
If we are already at this crisis now then I wonder what this summer will bring!
Are any of you in a crisis are, if so do you take care with your water consumption ? I do and have always done so!

Rainfall in Basse Normandie is once again much lower than usual for the time of year and as this is primarily an agricultural/arborial region the effects on the local economy are likely to be serious if not grave.

So far the supply of potable water is not appreciably threatened, but we are more than usually conservation conscious.

We have plenty of underground water supplies that do help…so not in a dry zone yet… but we have had some restrictions in past years… so maybe this year too…

We are always very careful about using water because it is so expensive! We keep our usage for the 2 of us to around 50m3 a year. And the garden only uses rain water.

One of our local lavoirs is in part fed by two 100 mm pipes which at this time of the year are running more or less full bore. For the last few weeks barely a trickle.

Yes it’s quite worrying David because if we are on severe crisis red level now then what the heck will happen during the summer !

It has rained quite a lot here recently.
We are in a rain shadow area and the Clunysois around the area of the Grosne river is partcularly drought prone.
We have a very deep forage to water the potager and the orchard.
Keeping our fingers crossed that we will not be in a drought zone this summer, but summer looks a long way away at the moment…

1 Like

It’s rained lots here too but alas its not filling the nappe aquifère. :frowning_face:

Our nappes phréatiques aren’t too plump here either.

My friend joined me on my bed at 6 this morning. Hello, I said, is there a storm brewing? No reply, he just snuggled a little closer. 30 minutes later I saw the flashes of lightning across the ceiling, no thunder but heard the gentle patter of rain through the open window. Then one clap of thunder, very loud and only a few seconds after lightning. At last I thought

Nothing. Later I checked the water butt and there was no more than a couple of bucketfulls at the bottom. When I looked at the weather map on the computer I saw the 2 large black blobs of rain moving eastwards, but split in 2 either side of us. :rage:

So Perigord Vert, North Dordogne, still in red crisis. :neutral_face:

We got rain overnight, not sure how much but looked pretty wet this morning!