Water level falls to record low of 25 cm in Warsaw’s Vistula River

The water level in the Vistula, Poland’s longest river, has fallen to its lowest ever recorded level in Warsaw amid an ongoing heatwave. Temperatures in much of the country have been consistently above 30°C (86°F) in recent weeks, while little rain has fallen.

On Sunday morning, Poland’s state meteorological and hydrological institute, IMGW-PIB, announced that the level of the river had fallen to just 25 cm at its Vistula boulevards measuring station in Warsaw. That was less than the previous low of 26 cm recorded in 2015.

“And the water [level] is still falling!” wrote IMGW-PIB on social media. Its forecasts predict that by Thursday the figure could drop as low as 20 cm amid continued warm, dry weather.

“There is no optimistic information here,” the institute’s Grzegorz Walijewski told broadcaster Polsat. “We are waiting for rain, but there is no sign of it.”

Many other parts of Poland are also experiencing historically low water levels in rivers. Michał Sikora, a hydrologist at IMGW-PIB, told broadcaster TVN that 69% of water monitoring stations in the country show a “bad” water level. That situation “will worsen in the coming days”, he added.

On Saturday, the city of Nowy Sącz in southern Poland also recorded record low water levels in the Kamienica and Łubinka, which are tributaries to the Dunajec River.

The low water levels cause myriad problems, including for agriculture, transport and tourism, as well as for animals and plants. The energy sector and many other industries, which rely on drawing water from rivers, could also suffer.

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IMGW-PIB’s monitoring stations showed that on Saturday most parts of Poland recorded maximum temperatures of between 29 and 31°C.

Temperatures in the first week of September were around 5°C above the norm, notes news website Gazeta.pl, while 2024 has so far been Poland’s second-driest year on record after 2015.

There is rain forecast in some parts of the country this week. However, experts note that short-term downfalls do not improve the hydrological situation.

Main image credit: IMGWmeteo/X 

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.