It is surprising, but up to 99% of the territory of our Slovakia suffers from drought. Somewhere more, somewhere less. Drought is the main theme of this summer.

The news that we once heard from southern Europe, or even “better” from far Africa, is very close to us today. Drought is a reality not only in Slovakia, but also in many other European countries, with which they have had no major problems so far.

The extreme heat, as a result of which it spread like this, affected France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where records were rewritten last week.

As reported by the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute, v in the course of less than a month, Slovakia was hit by two significant heat waves. The first was at the junction of this year’s June and July, and the second peaked in the middle of the previous week, or over the past weekend.

In both cases, several temperature records were rewritten. Although we did not break the absolute temperature record of 2007, we still reached +40.0 °C. It happened in Dolné Plachtince on July 21.

Drought in almost 99% of the territory

The situation will become even more so during the week from July 18 to 24. While until now they fought with him mainly in the east of the country, in the mentioned week western Slovakia also joined to a considerable extent.

Drought affects 99% of our territory to a greater or lesser extent. 60% of the territory is suffering from extreme drought.

source: intersucho.sk

Satellite images say it all

The drought can be seen realistically from different angles. We could witness the literal disappearance of several Slovak rivers, leaving only empty riverbeds.

In Hungary, the situation went even further. Several lakes dried up completely there.

But let’s go back to Slovakia. In addition to the fact that we could observe dried up rivers during a normal walk, we can also take a look at comparative images from satellite images.

Thanks to satellite data Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B and the Copernicus service we can see a comparison with 2020 and the current year.

Such is the difference between Lučenec and Rimavská Sobota.

This is how it looks in the south-eastern country for a change. It is in this area that they have been fighting for the longest time.

The situation is not any better in the Banskobystrica Region.

The Danube Plain is also suffering from drought.

We offer the last comparison from the northern parts of the territory. Even though it is colder there, drought has become rampant there as well.

The drought will be softened by the coming rain

Already in the night hours from Friday to Saturday, the weather will change in Slovakia. A wavy cold front will start to affect us, which will bring not only cooling, but especially precipitation.

They could completely “remove” the problem, but it certainly won’t happen for now. For that, we would need much more precipitation, even for a few days in a row.