Some Relief For Spain W. Reservoirs At 55%, But Med Side Misses Out On Rains - Reuters

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MADRID - A two year drought that left farmers without irrigation water and brought hosepipe and swimming pool restrictions is over in half of Spain but continues in the other half, the Met office said on Tuesday.

Reservoirs are now almost 55 percent full across the country, thanks to almost two months of heavy rain, Environment Ministry data showed. That compares with a low point of 39 percent at the beginning of October. But the increase masks sharp disparities between the western half of the country, which has been receiving wave after wave of Atlantic storms, and the Mediterranean half, which has missed out on its habitual rain.

Reservoirs in the Segura and Jucar river valleys in the southeast are still only 11 and 13 percent full, while some in the northwest are at more than 80 percent of capacity. "Our figures show that since the start of the hydrological year on October 1, we've had 222 millimetres of rain, when the average is 142, but the distribution is very different," said Angel Rivera, spokesman for the National Meteorological Institute.

"Places on the Atlantic side have had two or three times the normal amount of rain, while the Mediterranean side is about 50 percent below average," he told Reuters.

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http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39348/story.htm