Venice is emptying: why canals run out of water

The mermaids in this period of the year make the first-time visitor's hair stand on end.

The mechanical howls indicate that the

is about to carry out its threat and that the alleys of Venice will be flooded in a few seconds.

The alarms are usually accompanied by the metallic rumble of the steps of the neighbors on the raised platforms until they go down again.

The city leads a life protecting itself from the phenomenon and for 30 years built a mammoth infrastructure with a biblical name (Mose) to stop the aquatic onslaught that climate change had accentuated.

It's up and running.

But nobody expected this year, on the other hand, that in a place besieged by water, it would end up being missed.

Many of the canals in the center of Venice have been dehydrated these days, a relatively common phenomenon that had ceased to occur at this intensity since 2008. The foundations of the palaces appear on Wednesday morning through the mud.

The gondolas can barely navigate the San Polo area and the Madoneta canals.

Tourists attend in amazement —as with everything that happens here— the spectacle of the world's largest tourist industry stranded on a pile of mud.

"If it's not one thing, it's another.

You see, we don't win for adventures here.

Of course we work less during those hours and many of the private boats cannot move," says Andrea, a gondolier leaning on the

Bernardo, one of the 436 that connect the 121 islands of the city of the lagoon.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” She tries, pointing to the sign that sets 80 euros for a half-hour walk.

The peak of the phenomenon occurred on Wednesday at six in the afternoon.

Just when the mass of tourists who attended the Carnival was leaving the city dragging their suitcases and also emptying its streets.

The height of the water in the canals has been in recent days well below the

50 and 79 usual centimeters.

Also far from the level reached in 2019, in one of the worst

in history, when he reached 187 centimeters.

The time is key.

Around 70% of the low tide phenomena occur in this period: from January to February.

The unusual Venetian postcard, however, is now due to a combination of meteorological factors.

In addition to the evident lack of rain that plagues northern Italy, great atmospheric pressure, different marine currents that affect the lagoon and a full moon have coincided in recent days.

The exceptionality of the phenomenon, they explain from the municipal tidal forecast center, is not so much in the subzero measurements of the tide that reaches the lagoon (-60 centimeters in recent days, -56 centimeters today) as in its duration, which does not It was produced in these terms for 16 years.

A dry canal at low tide in Venice, this past Tuesday.

Luigi Costantini (AP)

The first images of the canals these days were reminiscent of the drought that is spreading throughout northern Italy, where last summer there were pictures such as the basin of the ever-mighty Po river languishing with hardly any water.

In fact, the longest river in Italy, which runs from the Alps in the northwest to the Adriatic, today has 61% less water than normal for this time of year.

But it is not the only symptom of the worst drought in 70 years.

Water levels in Lake Garda in northern Italy have also fallen to record lows, making it possible to reach the small island of San Biagio in the lake via a land road.

But these are parallel phenomena.

“Drought is a climatic phenomenon, not a meteorological one, like the tides.

But the tips are linked to temperature”,

Alvise Papa, head of the body that measures and studies the tides in Venice, also rules out the direct link between the emptying of the canals and the general drought.

But the original cause of it, he stresses, is the same.

“It is a stationary anticyclone since the end of January that causes high pressure.

The phenomenon does not allow disturbances to reach northern Italy, and therefore it does not rain.

But the high pressure does not allow the high tide to develop normally either, ”he explains.

“The anticyclone is a certain circulation of the atmosphere and in the Adriatic it is translated with winds from the north, which cause strange currents in the sea.

The average level of the Adriatic this February is +2 centimeters, while last year it was +21″.

In addition, the high pressure does not allow the tide to develop, it is as if it crushed it.

The tide normally enters the Otranto channel, goes up the Croatian coast and then goes down the Italian coast.

With the northerly winds, this flow is partly diminished.

So the average level of the Adriatic level is lowered”.

Papa also points to the astronomical gravitational phenomenon as the cause of this strange emptying.

The problem in Venice is that the canals, with no other possible means of mobility, make up their circulation network.

But the city is used to all kinds of threats and the City Council downplays all the commotion that has been created.

“There is no need for particular measures.

Those who take the boats know that they will not be able to pass through some channels.

It is something that the public transport company manages”.

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