Cyprus ends the summer holding 111.0 mln. m³ — 38.2% of capacity, and two and a half times what it had a year ago. But the recovery came less from rain than from the gentlest summer drawdown of any year on record that had water worth losing. Thirty-nine years of data say the comeback is real. They also say this is a thoroughly average August.
The last week of summer is the moment Cyprus traditionally looks at its reservoirs and winces. This year it can afford to look.
According to the Water Development Department's bulletin of 24 August, the island's 18 main dams hold 111.0 mln. m³ — 38.2% of capacity. On the same week last year they held 43.6 mln. m³, 15.0%. The reserve has grown by 67.4 mln. m³ in twelve months, a factor of 2.55 — the sixth-largest year-on-year swing in end-of-August storage since records began in 1988.
There is a blunter way to say it. There is more water in Cyprus's dams today, at the driest point of the year, than there was at the wettest moment of the whole of 2025. Last year's high-water mark was 77.4 mln. m³, reached on 15 January. Today's figure is 43% higher — and today is the day the reserve is at its thinnest.
The calendar year has been violent in the good direction: 27.4 mln. m³ on 5 January — the lowest reading since February 2009 — 123.4 mln. m³ by 4 June, and 111.0 mln. m³ now.
Storage in late August, every year since 1988
Each column is what the 18 main dams held in the same week of that year. 2026 is well above 2025, and still below the 39-year average of 117.5 mln. m³.
Reading nearest 2026-08-24 in each year. Main dams only (290.8 mln. m³ capacity). Source: WDD.
The part nobody has noticed
The year-on-year comparison is the story every outlet will run. The more interesting number is what happened after the rain stopped.
Between 15 June and 24 August the dams gave up 12.0 mln. m³ — 9.8% of what they were holding. That is the third-gentlest summer drawdown in thirty-nine years, behind only 2019 and 2020, and it happened at a rate of 0.171 mln. m³ a day.
Put that rate against every other year in the record and something unusual appears. Of the twenty-seven summers since 1988 that began with 100 mln. m³ or more in storage, 2026 drained the slowest. The only two years that lost water more slowly — 2008 and 1998 — did so because there was almost nothing left to lose. In August 2008 the island's dams were down to 18.8 mln. m³.
Across the summer the reserve has fallen by an average of 171,000 m³ a day — about 1,983 litres every second. Over the same stretch last year it was 2,630 litres a second. The island is emptying 25% slower than it was twelve months ago.
Every year that entered summer with real water drained faster than this one
Horizontal: what the dams held on 15 June. Vertical: how fast they fell between then and the 2026 reading. Of the 27 years that began summer above 100 mln. m³, 2026 drained the slowest.
Drawdown measured 15 June to the same week each year. Years lower on the chart than 2026 began summer near empty. Source: WDD.
Two things explain it.
Summer was not dry. Inflow across June, July and August reached 4.77 mln. m³ — the second-wettest summer in eleven years, behind only the exceptional 2018/19 season. The August–September figure alone, at 0.59 mln. m³, is already the highest in that eleven-year table with September still to come. There was even a measurable event in the second half of August: 0.38 mln. m³ arrived between the 13th and the 24th, nearly all of it into Kouris. Water flowing into a Cyprus dam in mid-August is not a normal occurrence.
| Season | Jun + Jul + Aug inflow (mln. m³) |
|---|---|
| 2018/19 | 8.27 |
| 2025/26 | 4.77 |
| 2019/20 | 3.77 |
| 2017/18 | 2.15 |
| 2021/22 | 1.39 |
| 2024/25 | 0.08 |
The 2nd-wettest summer in 11 years
Water reaching the dams across June, July and August — the three months when, in most years, effectively none does.
The 25/26 figure runs to the latest bulletin and can only rise — September is still to come. Source: WDD monthly inflow series.
And the dams peaked absurdly late. The reserve did not reach its seasonal high until 4 June. Of the thirty-seven years in which the dams refilled at all, only one other — 2009 — was still filling in June. Thirty-five had peaked by the end of May, and the commonest month to peak is April. The dams were still taking on water when most years are already two months into decline, and a shorter drawdown season means a shallower one.
(A note on precision: readings before 2014 were taken twice a month, on the 1st and the 15th, so peaks can only honestly be compared by month, not by date.)
The dams were still filling in June
One dot per year, stacked in the month its reserve reached the seasonal high. 35 of the 37 refill years had peaked by the end of May. Only 2 were still filling in June — 2009 and 2026.
Binned by month because that is the finest resolution the record supports: readings before 2014 were taken twice a month, on the 1st and the 15th, so an exact peak date does not exist for most of these years. Years in which the dams never refilled above their 1 January level are excluded. Source: WDD.
And now the cold water
None of which makes 2026 a good year. It makes it an ordinary one.
111.0 mln. m³ is 6.5 mln. m³ below the thirty-nine-year average for late August, which is 117.5 mln. m³, or 40.4%. Ranked against every year since 1988, 2026 comes twenty-first of thirty-nine — the middle of the pack, and slightly on the dry side of it. It is the healthiest end of summer since 2023, but 2023 itself finished the season on 165.8 mln. m³, half as much again as today.
The comparison survives the obvious objection. Strip out the reservoirs built since 1988 — Kannaviou and the three recharge dams — and the like-for-like figure is 103.1 mln. m³ against a like-for-like average of 112.6 mln. m³. Same verdict.
The fullest dams are the smallest ones
All 21 reservoirs, largest to smallest. Read down and the bars get longer: every dam above 80% sits in the bottom half. Kouris and Asprokremmos — between them 55% of everything stored — are the short bars at the top.
Capacity in mln. m³. Includes the recharge dams, which sit outside the headline total. Source: WDD.
The water is in the wrong dams
The recovery has also been wildly uneven, and it favoured the reservoirs that matter least.
The small mountain dams are essentially full. Kalopanagiotis stands at 99.4%, Klirou-Malounta at 91.1%, Solea at 89.9%, Tamassos at 87.1%, Xyliatos at 83.6%, Vyzakia at 80.5% — a reservoir that was at 0.7% this time last year. Between them, those six hold about 11 mln. m³.
The Southern Conveyor system, which accounts for 65% of national capacity, sits at 35.7%.
| Region | Now | Last year | Capacity (mln. m³) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicosia | 83.7% | 5.7% | 3.5 |
| Recharge/Other | 89.3% | 43.9% | 9.3 |
| Chrysochou | 44.1% | 15.6% | 26.1 |
| Paphos | 40.4% | 14.2% | 71.7 |
| Southern Conveyor | 35.7% | 15.6% | 189.5 |
Kouris and Asprokremmos alone hold 55% of every drop in the island's reservoirs. Kouris is at 39.4%, Asprokremmos at 38.4%. Those two numbers, not the 99.4% at Kalopanagiotis, decide what next summer looks like.
And one corner of the island got almost nothing.
| Reservoir | Now | Last year | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achna | 1.3% | 4.6% | −3.3 pp |
| Lefkara | 17.7% | 15.9% | +1.8 pp |
| Dipotamos | 30.2% | 27.6% | +2.6 pp |
| Kalavasos | 23.1% | 15.7% | +7.4 pp |
Achna, at 1.3%, is the only reservoir in Cyprus holding less water than it did a year ago. It is filled by transfer rather than by its own catchment, so its level reflects allocation decisions rather than rainfall — but it is still, at the end of the wettest winter in years, effectively empty.
About 3.3× the buffer, going into the winter that decides everything
Both years on the same calendar. 2025 fell all year to a December floor of 26.9 mln. m³. 2026 climbed until June and has barely moved since — the shaded band is where 11 years of autumn precedent put its floor.
Projection is the median and interquartile range of the 1 September-to-annual-minimum drop over the last 11 years, applied to the latest reading. A precedent range, not a hydrological model. Source: WDD.
August is not the bottom
The last thing worth saying is that the season everyone treats as the low point isn't one.
Cyprus reservoirs do not bottom out in August. They bottom out in late November or December, after two more months of demand and before the first serious rain. Over the past eleven years the island has lost a further 13.7 to 32.2 mln. m³ between the start of September and the annual minimum, with a median of 21.9 mln. m³.
Apply that to today's figure and Cyprus is on course to bottom out somewhere near 89 mln. m³ — around 31% — in late November.
Which, in the end, is the number that matters. Last winter the island bottomed at 26.9 mln. m³. The coming water year is set to open with more than three times the buffer the last one did.
That is a real cushion, and it was not there twelve months ago. But it is a cushion, not a solution: the structural picture is unchanged, roughly 60% of dam reserves still go to agriculture, and one generous winter does not undo four dry ones. What happens after November is a question about rain, and nobody has ever been able to answer it in August.
Author: Vladimir Bugay, Fragmata developer Data: Cyprus Water Development Department, bulletin of 24 August 2026. All figures cover the 18 main dams (290.804 mln. m³ capacity), excluding recharge reservoirs; the all-21-reservoir total on that date is 119.3 mln. m³, 39.8%. Year-on-year comparisons use the reading nearest the same calendar day in each year, so “last year” is the bulletin of 25 August 2025. Historical series 1988–2026 from Fragmata's own dataset. Dam levels updated daily at fragmata.info.