Total storage in Cyprus's 18 main dams has flattened at 42.4% (123.4 million m³) — the highest level since June 2024, and almost exactly double where it stood a year ago. After a season that delivered 112 million m³ of new water, the most in four years, the rains have handed off to summer.
For nine days now, the island-wide number has barely moved. On 27 May the 18 main reservoirs held 123.0 mln. m³; today, 5 June, they hold 123.4 mln. m³ — a gain of less than half a million cubic metres in over a week. The line on the chart that climbed almost vertically through the spring has gone flat.
That flat line is the story. It marks the high-water mark of the 2025/26 hydrological year and the moment the season quietly turns over — from the wet half, when rain fills the dams, to the dry half, when demand draws them down. The inflow season is, for all practical purposes, over. What follows is the outflow season.
This is a good moment to look at the whole arc, because by most measures it was the best water year Cyprus has had in some time.
The high-water mark
The 18 main dams crested at 123.4 mln. m³, equal to 42.4% of their combined 290.8 mln. m³ capacity. You have to go back to June 2024 to find them holding this much water — a two-year high. A year ago today they sat at 21.1% (61.5 mln. m³), so the island is carrying almost exactly double the storage it had last June.
The plateau itself is normal and expected. Cyprus's dams fill on a sharp seasonal cycle: they take on water from roughly December through April, level off in May, and then decline steadily through the long dry summer. The flattening we're seeing now is the top of that curve. Barring an unusual summer storm, 123.4 mln. m³ is likely close to the season's ceiling.
Declining (3 years)
From 9% to 42%: the shape of the recovery
The season did not start well. Storage actually kept falling through the autumn, bottoming out at 26.9 mln. m³ — just 9.3% — on 29 December 2025, the lowest point of the year. At that stage a fifth straight drought year looked entirely plausible.
Then the weather turned. From that late-December low, the dams added 96.5 mln. m³ to reach today's peak — a 4.6-fold increase in storage, or a swing of more than 33 percentage points, in roughly five months. It was one of the fastest recoveries in the record.
The inflow season in numbers
Storage tells you how much water is sitting in the dams. Inflow tells you how much new water the year actually delivered — and that is where 2025/26 stands out.
Cumulative inflow since the hydrological year began on 1 October reached 112.0 mln. m³. For context:
| Season | Total inflow (mln. m³) |
|---|---|
| 2021/22 | 153.75 |
| 2022/23 | 48.78 |
| 2023/24 | 24.71 |
| 2024/25 | 18.66 |
| 2025/26 | 112.0 |
This is the first season above 100 mln. m³ since 2021/22 — four years and three drought seasons ago. It is six times what the entire 2024/25 year delivered (18.66 mln. m³), and roughly 3.6 times the average of the three dry years that preceded it.
What makes the figure remarkable is how late and how concentrated the water arrived. Through the first three months — October, November, December — the dams took in barely 2.2 mln. m³, about 2% of the season's total. The other 98% came from January onward, and the bulk of it in a single four-month burst: February through May delivered 96.4 mln. m³, or 86% of the entire year's inflow.
The months that did the work
- March 2026 — 35.4 mln. m³. The single biggest month of the season, and by Cyprus standards an exceptional March: the third-best since 1988, according to weather service KitasWeather.
- April 2026 — 23.6 mln. m³. The second-largest April since 1987/88, behind only the legendary April 2019 (25.3 mln. m³).
- May 2026 — 13.2 mln. m³. A genuine record: the best May inflow since 1987, per Cyprus Mail. May is normally a quiet month; this one delivered more than any May on record.
- February 2026 — 24.2 mln. m³, a strong opening to the wet run.
Taken together, March and April alone produced 59 mln. m³ — which the Greek-Cypriot outlet Offsite summarised as "the best two months for inflow into the dams in the last 40 years."
Nine dams filled to the brim
The rain refilled the small and medium dams completely. Nine reservoirs reached 100% capacity this season — every dam north of the Troodos plus all four in the Chrysochou district. Xyliatos was first to overflow, on 23 March; Tamassos followed on 2 April; Vyzakia closed the run on 27 April. As of today, five are still full or near it: Pomos, Kalopanagiotis, Tamassos and Klirou-Malounta at 100%, with Solea at 99.6%.
The year-over-year turnarounds at the smaller dams are striking:
- Vyzakia — 1.9% last year, 97.6% today. A roughly 50-fold recovery.
- Xyliatos — 18.2% → 99.4%.
- Mavrokolympos — 0% (bone dry) last year, peaked above 90% and sits at 86.2% today.
Among the big reservoirs that actually move the island-wide number:
- Germasoyeia — 21.3% → 60.1%, its highest level since 2020.
- Kouris, the island's largest dam — 17.9% → 41.8% (48.1 mln. m³), a gain of 24 percentage points.
- Asprokremmos, Kannaviou and Evretou all roughly doubled, finishing the wet season at 41.9%, 52.2% and 50.2%.
Arminou: the hardest-working dam
One small reservoir did more work than its size suggests. Arminou holds just 4.3 mln. m³, yet it received 21.3 mln. m³ of inflow this season — 4.9 times its own capacity — because it functions less as a store than as a pass-through. Since October, 20.14 mln. m³ has been pumped from Arminou up to Kouris, accounting for most of Kouris's gain for the year. Arminou catches the water; Kouris keeps it.
The ones that didn't recover
A strong year is not a uniform one. Three dams in the south and east barely benefited:
- Achna — 2.0%, with zero inflow all season. The only dam in the system that received no new water at all. It is fed by transfers, not its own catchment, and there were none to spare.
- Lefkara — 18.5%, scarcely above last year's 17.1%.
- Kalavasos — 24.6%, and deliberately drawn down through the spring to feed the Southern Conveyor downstream.
Now comes the hard part
The plateau is the pivot. June has so far added just 0.7 mln. m³, and history is blunt about what comes next: June, July and August together rarely deliver more than a trickle. From here the line on the storage chart turns downward, and the question for the next five months is no longer how high will it fill but how long will it last.
There are reasons for cautious optimism. The island enters summer with twice last year's reserves, the small northern dams full, and a growing fleet of desalination plants — eight now operational, with the government targeting near-total desalination coverage of public supply by early 2027. The Water Development Department has called water cuts a "last resort" and summer 2026 "manageable" if a 10% conservation target holds.
But the structural picture has not changed. Roughly 60% of dam reserves go to agriculture, Cyprus still carries the EU's highest Water Exploitation Index, and one good year does not undo four dry ones. The dams are fuller than they have been in two years — and that is genuinely worth marking. What happens to those reserves now depends far less on the weather and far more on how carefully the island spends what the winter gave it.
Author: Vladimir Bugay, Fragmata developer Data: Cyprus Water Development Department, report of 5 June 2026 (18 main dams, excluding recharge reservoirs). Historical inflow and storage figures from Fragmata's own dataset. Monthly rankings via KitasWeather, Cyprus Mail and Offsite. Dam levels updated daily at fragmata.info.