Italy is in the depths of one of its worst droughts, with the country’s largest river, the Po, hitting its lowest level in 70 years, threatening crops and raising the specter of power outages.
While much of Europe has had drier-than-average conditions this year, northern Italy’s Po valley is the worst hit, according to the JRC Global Drought Observatory. Several months without rains and an earlier-than-usual halt in flows from melting snow in the western Alps have made large swaths of the river bed visible — so much so that a German tank from World War II resurfaced recently.
With water sources depleting, Italian hydroelectric reservoir levels are at historic lows. The production of hydroelectric power, which usually supplies 15% of the country’s needs, is down 50% so far this year from 2021. Compounding the region’s woes, the Adriatic sea has entered into the Po delta for at least 10 kilometers (6 miles), threatening farm lands and raising the risk of salty water in taps. Northern Italian towns are rationing water and supplying it in trucks as they face a potential drinking-water shortage.
