Czechia increasingly suffering from soil drought

The dry weather over the last two to three months has caused a very intense soil drought to gradually develop across a large part of the country. According to the Intersucho website, 7% of Czech territory is currently experiencing extreme drought, 10% is experiencing exceptional drought and another 21% severe drought. Nearly 40% of the country is thus significantly drier than the average in the 1961 - 2015 period, according to the website.

Scientists have also been monitoring so-called “cumulative drought stress” which leads to loss of growth resilience. Cumulative drought stress is measured by the number of days in the last six months when the relative soil saturation was below 50%. So far, experts have recorded this condition mainly in southern Moravia.