Droughts in Italy show Lake Garda changing landscape

Italy's worst drought in decades has reduced Lake Garda, the country's largest lake, to the lowest level ever recorded, exposing expanses of previously underwater rocks and warming the water to temperatures that approach the average in the Caribbean Sea.

Tourists flocking to the popular northern lake on Friday for the start of Italy's key summer long weekend have found a vastly different landscape than in previous years.

An expansive stretch of bleached rock extended far from the normal shoreline, ringing the southern Sirmione Peninsula with a yellow halo between the green hues of the water and the trees on the shore.

We came back last year, we liked it, and we came back this year, tourist Beatrice Masi said as she sat on the rocks.

We found that the landscape had changed a lot.

Northern Italy hasn't seen significant rainfall for months, and the snowfall this year was down 70 per cent, drying up important rivers such as the Po, which flows across Italy's agricultural and industrial heartland.

Many European countries — including Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain — are enduring droughts this summer that have hurt farmers and shippers, and promoted authorities to restrict water use.

The parched condition of the Po, Italy's longest river, has already caused billions of dollars in losses for farmers who normally rely on it to irrigate fields and rice paddies.

The authorities have allowed more water from Lake Garda to flow into local rivers at 70 cubic metres of water per second.

They reduced the amount in late July to protect the lake and the financially important tourism tied to it.

With 45 cubic metres of water per second being diverted to rivers, the lake was 32 centimetres above the water table, near record lows in 2003 and 2007 and near record lows in 2003 and 2007.

Garda Mayor Davide Bedinelli said he had to protect both the farmers and the tourism industry.

He stated that the summer tourist season was going better than expected despite cancellations from German tourists during Italy's latest heat wave in late July.

The tourist season is not in danger, according to a July 20 Facebook post from Mr Bedinelli, a fact that we have to deal with this year.

He said the lake was losing 2 centimetres of water a day.

The lake's temperature has been above average for August, according to seatemperature.org.

On Friday, the water of the Garda was nearly 26 degrees Celsius, several degrees warmer than the average August temperature of 22 C and near the Caribbean Sea's average of 27 C.

For Mario Treccani, who owns a lakefront concession of beach chairs and umbrellas, the expanded shoreline means that fewer people are renting chairs because there are now plenty of rocks on which to sunbathe.

He noted that on windy days sometimes waves from the lake would splash up onto the tourists, due to a small wall that usually blocks the water from the beach chairs.

It is a bit sad. Before you could hear the waves breaking up here, you could hear it. He said that you don't hear anything.