* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
With so many months enduring the drought in Catalonia, any image related to rain is like a treasure worth saving. In this case, we are talking about pearls, which is what these drops of water look like deposited on the cabbage plants in an orchard in Vacarisses, in Vallès Occidental.
I have captured these photographs for La Vanguardia’s Readers’ Photos just after the latest rains this week, which have contributed to substantially increasing the flow of the reservoirs of the Ter Llobregat system, which have already reached 27% of their capacity.
The showers have mainly benefited the Pyrenees area, in addition to the northeastern, pre-coastal and coastal regions. On the other hand, the rains have been more sporadic in the Plana de Lleida and in the Terres de l’Ebre, south of Tarragona.
The Ter Llobregat system, which formally left the drought emergency phase this past Monday to become exceptional, has reached, in the internal basins of the reservoirs, more than 178 hm3.
The climate summary for the month of April prepared by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) indicates that in Catalonia rainfall exceeded the reference values in the Pyrenean regions of Lleida and in the provinces of Barcelona and Girona.
Specifically, in Barcelona and the Vallès regions, where these photographs of the “pearl” raindrops were taken, rainfall has doubled normal values. On the other hand, there has been a water deficit in the south of Tarragona.