Cyprus summers are supposed to be dry by definition. This one kept raining. August 2026 was officially the wettest August since records began in 1902, four Met Department gauges have logged their wettest late summer on record, and the dams took in more water in August and September than in any late summer of the past eleven years. And Achna, the reservoir everyone had written off, has more than tripled in eleven days — thanks to rain that fell a hundred kilometres away.
In a normal year the August–September line in the Water Development Department's inflow table is a formality. In six of the last eleven seasons it was under 0.1 mln. m³. Last year it was 0.004.
This year it reads 1.366 mln. m³, with the last days of September still to go.
When we wrote about the end of summer a month ago, that figure stood at 0.59 and was already a record. It has more than doubled since, on the back of storms that the calendar says should not have happened.
The wettest August in 124 years
The Department of Meteorology's verdict came on 9 September: August 2026 averaged 30 mm of rain across the government-controlled areas, against a normal of 2.9 mm — 1,034% of the monthly norm and the highest August figure in a record that goes back to 1902. The previous record, 20.6 mm, had stood since 1971.
Most of it fell in a single day. Between 28 and 30 August the island averaged 22.5 mm, nearly all of it on the 29th.
The Met Department's automatic weather stations show the whole run, day by day. From early July to mid-September thunderstorms broke over the island five times:
- 6–7 July — a mountain cloudburst: 100.3 mm at Agros in a single day, 39 mm at Polystypos.
- 17–18 August — first Nicosia, Lefkara and Larnaca, then the high Troodos the next day: 50 mm at Agros, 38 at Polystypos, 33 at Platania.
- 29 August — the record-breaker, and the only storm that hit the whole island at once. 68.1 mm at Achna, 27 at Frenaros, 26 at Polystypos, 21 at Larnaca Airport and at Kouris Dam, 17 in Nicosia.
- 5 September — Troodos again: 22 mm at the Troodos station.
- 18 September — the yellow-warning storm: 64.1 mm at Lefkara, 31 at Larnaca Airport, 26 at Frenaros.
Add up 1 August to 24 September and compare it with every year each gauge has on file, and four of them have never seen anything like it.
| Station | Aug 1 – Sep 24, 2026 | Typical year (median) | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achna | 68.8 mm | 0.3 mm | 1st since 2004 |
| Larnaca Airport | 57.1 mm | 3.4 mm | 1st since 2000 |
| Kouris Dam | 20.6 mm | 0.4 mm | 1st since 2010 |
| Polystypos | 79.9 mm | 32.0 mm | 1st since 2011 |
| Lefkara | 106.7 mm | 20.8 mm | 2nd since 2004 |
| Nicosia | 30.7 mm | 1.6 mm | 2nd since 2000 |
| Troodos | 91.9 mm | 41.5 mm | 5th since 2005 |
| Prodromos | 58.9 mm | 32.6 mm | 6th since 2003 |
Four gauges set late-summer records
Rainfall from 1 August to 24 September at eight Met Department stations. Bars are 2026; the grey tick is a typical year (median); the red tick is the wettest other year on record. At Achna, Larnaca Airport, Kouris Dam and Polystypos, 2026 beat every year on file. In the high Troodos, 2009 was far wetter.
← swipe to see the full chart →
Cyprus Department of Meteorology automatic weather stations (CC BY 4.0), daily totals via kairika.info. Years with at least 90% of days reported. Scale capped at 250 mm.
The pattern is clear. In the lowlands and the east, this is the wettest late summer the gauges have recorded, or close to it — a record at Achna, Larnaca Airport and Kouris Dam, second only to 2003 in Nicosia. At Achna the usual amount for these eight weeks is effectively zero; this year one afternoon brought more than twice the previous record. The high Troodos was wet but not historic: August 2009 dumped more than 220 mm on Prodromos and Troodos, and 2005 and 2008 were wetter there too. That is how the island as a whole can set a 124-year record while the wettest mountain stations do not.
Kairika's season tracker puts the whole hydrological year, October to September, at 562 mm — 146% of the 1961–1990 normal.
The dams felt it
Rain on hot, dry ground mostly evaporates or soaks in. Enough of this rain ran off to show up in the bulletins:
- The bulletin of 19 August, a day after the Troodos storm, logged 0.26 mln. m³ of new inflow — mostly Kouris, plus Dipotamos, Lefkara and Arminou.
- The bulletin of 7 September, the first to capture both the island-wide storm and the 5 September Troodos rain, logged 0.50 mln. m³ into eight dams at once: Kouris 0.34, Asprokremmos 0.09, and smaller amounts into Polemidia, Lefkara, Arminou, Kalavasos, Dipotamos and Kalopanagiotis.
- The bulletin of 23 September added another 0.12, mostly into Arminou and Kouris.
That accounts for roughly half the late-summer total. The other half is something quieter and in its way just as unusual: a steady trickle of 10 to 20 thousand m³ a day into Kouris and Arminou, all summer long, rain or no rain. That is the Troodos still draining the wettest spring in years. In a normal summer the rivers feeding those dams run dry by July. This year they never stopped.
| Season | Aug–Sep inflow (mln. m³) |
|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 1.366 |
| 2018/19 | 0.542 |
| 2023/24 | 0.208 |
| 2022/23 | 0.186 |
| 2019/20 | 0.161 |
| 2024/25 | 0.004 |
Aug–Sep inflow: 1.37 mln. m³, 2.5× the previous best
Water that reached the dams in August and September, by hydrological season. The previous high was 18/19 at 0.54 mln. m³. In six of the other ten seasons it was under 0.1 mln. m³.
← swipe to see the full chart →
Cyprus Water Development Department, monthly inflow table in the daily bulletin; 2025/26 through the latest bulletin, with the last days of September still to come.
At 1.366 mln. m³, the late-summer figure is 2.5 times the previous best — and that best, 2018/19, came after the wettest winter in a generation. July was the second-highest in the table too, at 1.112 mln. m³.
Summer demand is still larger than the trickle, so the level keeps edging down: the 18 main dams have gone from 115.2 mln. m³ at the start of August to 105.1 mln. m³ (36.2%) today. But every cubic metre that arrives in September is one that does not have to be carried through to winter, and the island is holding 2.8 times what it had a year ago — 37.0 mln. m³ (12.7%) on this date in 2025.
And then Achna
Which brings us to the dam that seemed not to fit.
Achna is the eastern terminal of the Southern Conveyor, a holding tank at the end of a 110-kilometre pipeline from Kouris (we explained how it works here). A month ago it was the only reservoir in Cyprus holding less water than a year earlier, and its level had been sliding all summer.
On 29 August its own weather station recorded 68.1 mm in a day — by far the heaviest late-summer rain at Achna in the station's twenty-three years. The dam's response: nothing. It stood at 0.086 mln. m³ before the storm and 0.082 after it, and then sat flat for two weeks. The Water Development Department's inflow column for Achna still reads 0.000 for the entire season.
Then, from mid-September, with almost no rain at all — 0.7 mm at the Achna gauge in the whole period — it started to climb:
| Bulletin | Achna storage | Full |
|---|---|---|
| 14 September | 0.082 mln. m³ | 1.2% |
| 17 September | 0.110 mln. m³ | 1.6% |
| 23 September | 0.205 mln. m³ | 3.0% |
| 25 September | 0.284 mln. m³ | 4.2% |
Achna: a record storm did nothing; a dry fortnight later it tripled
Storage in Achna dam (line) against daily rain at the Achna weather station (bars). The 68 mm downpour of 29 August stopped the slide but added nothing. The rise began in mid-September, on days with almost no rain, from 0.082 to 0.284 mln. m³.
← swipe to see the full chart →
Storage: Cyprus Water Development Department daily bulletins (Achna inflow recorded as zero all season). Rain: Cyprus Department of Meteorology, Achna AWS, via kairika.info.
Three and a half times in eleven days, with zero inflow and no rain. Achna is now at its highest level since early September 2025 and, for the first time this year, above where it was twelve months ago (0.168 mln. m³).
Water that does not come from the sky or the catchment comes down the pipe — and this time there is a paper trail. On 16 September the cabinet approved an extra 3.5 mln. m³ of irrigation water for 2026, 3 mln. m³ of it from the Southern Conveyor, with 2 mln. m³ earmarked for autumn crops including potatoes. Agriculture Minister Christos Senekis said the decision rested on the Water Development Department's assessment that "the additional inflows recorded in the unified pipeline" had opened a limited margin. Achna exists to feed the Kokkinochoria, the island's potato belt. The rise began the same week.
The department has not said in so many words that the new water is going into Achna, so treat that as the obvious reading rather than a confirmed one. But if it is right, the story closes neatly: the record storm that fell on Achna did nothing for it, while the rain and springs of the Troodos, a hundred kilometres upstream, are filling it by pipe.
It is also unusual timing. Fragmata's record of Achna goes back to 1988, and summer top-ups are nothing new — the dam has gained 0.1 mln. m³ or more in a fortnight in June or July in seven different years. Between August and October it had happened only once before, in October 2012.
What comes next
The hydrological year closes on 30 September, and the first bulletin of October will lock in the final August–September figure. The new season starts with the 18 main dams near 105 mln. m³, against 37 mln. m³ a year ago — and with the Troodos, for once, still wet underfoot.
None of that tells us anything about the winter. As we found in our El Niño analysis, nobody can forecast a Cyprus rainy season from September. But this was a summer that refused to follow the script, and it hands the new water year a better start than any since 2023.
Author: Vladimir Bugay, Fragmata developer Data: Cyprus Water Development Department, daily bulletins to 25 September 2026; storage figures cover the 18 main dams (290.804 mln. m³ capacity), excluding recharge reservoirs. August island average and 1902 record: Cyprus Department of Meteorology, as reported by the Cyprus Mail, 9 September 2026. Station rainfall: Department of Meteorology automatic weather stations (CC BY 4.0, raw data), daily totals via kairika.info; rankings compare 1 August – 24 September in every year with at least 90% of days reported. Season-to-date rainfall: Kairika island model average (ERA5 via Open-Meteo, CC BY 4.0) through 19 September. Cabinet decision: Cyprus Mail, 16 September 2026. Achna history 1988–2026 from Fragmata's own dataset, bi-monthly before 2014. Dam levels updated daily at fragmata.info.