Wuhan Fighting Serious Drought

Instead of holding a meeting on flood-control early May as a rule, the municipal government of Wuhan, provincial capital of Hubei, convened an urgent teleconference on fighting drought, which has never seen in the city over the past 120 years.

Since spring began this year, a serious drought has hit most areas of Hubei to leave the northwest parts of the province such as Dabieshan and Dahongshan not a drop of rain except a pitiful amount of rainfall in January. Wheat has withered and there is no sowing of peanuts or transplanting of rice to speak of. Meanwhile, over 2.3 million people and about 1.7 million cattle have been suffering from a shortage of drinking water.

The city of Wuhan, generally with abundant rainfall in previous years, only had 80mm of rain from February to April, witnessing the driest spring in the past 120 years. Due to little rainfall and a high temperature, many rivers and ponds have got dried up; most lakes and reservoirs with water are already at their lowest level. For the present, the whole area of Wuhan has a water reserve of not as much high as one third of that in ordinary years, with 250 thousand mu of crops and over 500,000 people affected. According to weather forecast, there will still be no big rainfall to be expected in the near future and the rainy season will be put off to June.

Now the Wuhan government is making every effort to make most of water resources available to meet the demand of people, cattle and crops for water. There are as many as over 20 million people having been mobilized to fight drought in the whole province of Hubei.

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