A year ago in January , water reserves in Sardinia were just over half the storage capacity in artificial basins, almost 960 million cubic meters, equal to over 52.5%.
Now, as of January 31, 2025, we remain below the 50% threshold (49.7%) with just over 906 million cubic meters out of 1,824 million.
The snow and rain that fell after the Christmas holidays have given relief to some parts of the island that were in great difficulty , such as Baronia and Nuorese, due to the dry autumn season that had brought the dams to reach 749.6 million cubic meters, or 41.1%, but it is still not enough.
The data were released by the Regional Basin Authority in the latest bulletin reporting the current situation.
The value of the water volume stored at 31 January 2025 increased by 156 million cubic meters, compared to the volume stored at 31 December 2024.
As regards the status indicator for monitoring and early warning of drought for the entire island for the month of January, a condition of "danger" or "alert" is recorded, with an indicator value of 0.19. In short: Sardinia is not yet out of the drought emergency.
This is also confirmed by the measure adopted yesterday by the Province of Sassari which authorized the reuse of waste water treated by the city's purifier. And today Coldiretti is in the square in front of the Prefecture for the serious drought situation in southern Sardinia.
The most critical situations are found, in fact, on the Alto Cixerri, in Sulcis, where the volume stored slightly exceeds 10.7%, but also in Basso Sulcis with 31%. Slightly better, but below the 50% threshold, the Tirso Flumendosa system (45.5%) while the North Western and Ogliastra, despite exceeding half of the stored capacity, show a "danger" indicator that does not give us peace of mind (0.19 like the regional average). Now we hope for the new polar wave of San Valentino that could bring snow at low altitudes and other precipitation.
