According to meteo.pt, nearly the whole country is in mild drought; my old neighbor says there's still time for rain this year.

My fields normally have hip high grass by this time of year, but instead it's ankle height and turning from yellow to brown.

Where I plowed, reseeded, and rolled it, evening condensation is keeping it alive, but it isn't growing [the weeds are though].

It makes me think that folks with livestock will be looking at disaster if it doesn't rain a lot soon.

How are things where you are? What are you hearing?  

Down here on the south coast (Ria de Alvor) it is becoming critical. Even the weeds (e.g Bermuda Buttercups) are dieing and land which was ploughed and seeded for cattle fodder in the autumn has produced no grass. I understand that the winter wheat crop in the Alentejo has all but failed.

I spoke to a 90+ year old man in the village (Mexllhoeira Grande) a few days ago and he said that he has never known December and January to be so dry in his lifetime.

Colin  

I read the Meteo.pt report and it did say that November's rain meant that the situation was not as bad as 2004/2005. The only time our borehole ran dry was in the summer of 2005.  

My English neighbours' borehole dried up two days ago - just a 'splutter' of reddish-brown sludge coming through the taps. They are 86 and 71 year's old - I feel very sorry for them. Unfortunately they have no cisterna so cannot 'buy in' water from the Bombeiros.

And now the cold weather is creating havoc in the garden. We have had frosts every night for the last week (grass white in the mornings and car windows iced-up) with -4℃ being the lowest recorded temperature in my garden; the Hibiscus and Brugmansia (Datura) have taken a hit. Tomorrow (Friday) the forecast for Portimão is 0℃ at night; that is for the town centre which means we will have -6℃ out here in the country.

Colin  

How sad for your neighbours Useless .. is there anything they can do / be done for them?

We are fortunately now on mains ... we don't have a borehole and in the early days relied on neighbours for water. We do have a 19,000 litre underground cisterna which has some water in it but I don't know how much. I have been watering my garden every 2-3 days sparingly.

Our low has been 4,6c here in the orchards, strangely 7,8c last night but have only had two nights of rain since the big storm of 24 October.
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How sad for your neighbours Useless .. is there anything they can do / be done for them?

It is sad Victoria, especially as they have an 87 year old guest staying with them for two weeks and they themselves are relatively new arrivals here.

There really is nothing that can be done to help them, and to be honest they are rather naive. They have spent a lot of bureaucratic time and money in putting in a swimming pool (not yet finished) when I advised them that a cisterna would have been a better investment. They are the sort of people who "always know better".

Today I pointed out the stark reality that unless we get torrential rain in February and March they will have no water for the house until next winter. I advised them to buy the extra large economy size bottles of deodorant !!!


Colin  

feel so sorry for them.
If they have a bore hole surely they must have a cisterna.how does the water go into the house .... just by pump ?