Name: Spain’s Historic Drought | May 3, 2023
Uploaded: 2023-05-09T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 10 min
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Hello, lovely people; good day and good vibes to you from magnificent Miami.

We're here ahead of the huge Formula 1 race this weekend, and that guy right there? Well, that's the legend.

Participle clauses

Seven-time world champ Lewis Hamilton, he'll be one of the fastest drivers on the planet, zooming at top speeds of about 200 miles per hour.

We hope you're off and zooming today as well.

It's Wednesday, May 3rd, also, #yourwordwednesday.

Follow me @CoyWire on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok and put your unique vocabulary word in the comments section of my most recent post,

and we're gonna choose one good one to work in tomorrow's show.

I'm Coy Wire, this is CNN10, and we start in Spain today, where they are seeing a major drought.

The Spanish National Weather Service says the country has been in a long-term drought since the end of last year.

In March, the country only received 36% of its average monthly rainfall, which made it the second driest March this century, but it didn't stop there.

That trend continued into last month, and we may see it, now, end up being the driest on record.

These conditions have been caused by soaring temperatures that make it feel like it's mid-summer instead of spring time.

The lack of water, well, it's having a catastrophic impact on farms across the region.

According to the coordinator of farmers and ranchers organizations, the drought has affected about 60% of Spain's countryside, and it's destroyed crops across more than eight million acres.

That's an area bigger than the entire state of Maryland.

Also, Spaniards have been asked to conserve water by taking quick showers, being mindful when washing dishes, and not filling their swimming pools.

Our senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen has more on the very dry conditions in Spain.

From afar, even a natural disaster can look majestic.

But, up close, the full impact of the global climate emergency is clear to see.

This is the Sau Reservoir near Barcelona, normally one of the largest bodies of fresh water in this part of Spain.

But months of drought and the water levels are so low, an entire medieval village usually underwater has come to light.

The folks here say normally, you'd barely be able to see even the tip of the medieval church because it would be almost fully submerged.

But now, as you can see, the church is very much on land, and the authorities here fear things will get much worse once the summer's heat really sets in.

The Sau Reservoir is already at less than 10% capacity, and that's causing hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland to dry up.

"The grain should be milky," he said. "We're in a critical moment."

"If it doesn't rain, this will end up empty."

"We should be seeing the grain come up to here, but it's only like this."

"If it doesn't rain in the coming week, the crop will be zero."

But there is no rain in sight, and temperatures in Spain have skyrocketed.

Scientists at the Institute of Agri-Food Research and Technology are trying to find ways to make very little water go a longer way.

Chief scientist Joan Girona says efficiency needs to be maximized.

It's our goal; how⏤taking the most of every drop of water.

Just like the crops, the people in this area are also in survival mode.

Dozens of towns are without water and need to get it trucked in

The village Castellcir hasn't had any for about a year, and residents say they can't even remember the last time it rained.

"I don't recall," Juan tells me. "It's been a long time, a year or more, without proper rain. Nothing."

Back at the Sau Reservoir, authorities are actually draining most of the remaining water

to prevent this precious and ever-scarcer resource from getting contaminated by the sludge at the bottom of this once mighty lake.

All right, summer is just around the corner, and if you and your family are thinking about heading to any of the South Florida or Caribbean beaches,

you might need to know that you could encounter some seaweed, and by "some", I mean a whole lot of it.

That's because a record-breaking amount of seaweed known as "Sargassum", which can smell like rotten eggs or sulfur when it washes up on shore,

is starting to pile up on popular beaches, threatening tourism in certain areas.

Check out this NASA image, which shows just how enormous this massive blob of floating seaweed is.

13 million tons of it just drifting ominously throughout the Caribbean, stretching all the way to the west coast of Africa.

CNN's Leyla Santiago reports from a beach in Key West, Florida, and tells us how this seaweed phenomenon is just the tip of the iceberg, with the peak expected to come later this summer.

This is Sargassum, mixed in with a few other things, and this is what is inundating Florida's coast⏤specifically, they're expecting, the east coast.

And, remember, last month, we talked about this, but now, we're actually starting to see it come in in those record numbers that scientists predicted.

So much so that, take a look over here, the beach rakers here on this beach in Key West have already arrived and have already done one run-through on what's hitting the Florida coast right now.

Let's go for a walk so I can, kind of, show you how all of this stuff just piles up, and, again, gets pretty smelly because it decays out here.

And, as we mentioned, this is what one scientist told me, is just the tip of the iceberg; more expected.

Because when this is out there, it is not only, right now, a 5,000-mile-long body of seaweed; it is still growing while it's out there.

So, it is increasing in the amount that will be headed this way.

What country has the southernmost capital in the world?

Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

When it comes to capital cities, Wellington, New Zealand is as low as you can go, sitting at 41 degrees south.

Now, when you think of New Zealand, you might think of kiwis, which is the country's iconic national bird.

But the population of these flightless birds has plummeted.

Conservationists say that most people have never seen a kiwi in the wild and estimate that there are only about 70,000 of them left in the country.

But, as our Michael Holmes tells us, there are now efforts to keep this species alive and thriving in New Zealand.

The fight to save the kiwi, the iconic flightless bird, is taking off in New Zealand.

Ever since people came here, we've had a special connection with the animal known as the kiwi.

Central to Maori myth, our sports teams, our rugby league team, our defense force, you know; even when we go overseas, we're known as Kiwis.

So, it's our duty, really, to look after the animal that's gifted us its name.

There are about 90 initiatives to save the kiwis in New Zealand, many of them focusing on removing threats which have reduced the population,

by educating dog owners and culling predator species like stoats.

Kiwis are surprisingly tough and resilient; they've got these big fighting claws.

So, an adult kiwi can fight off a whole heap of pests, from possums and stoats.

The, really, only issue for an adult kiwi is roaming dogs.

Where they get hammered is stoats eating the chicks before they get up to that fighting weight.

A group of kiwis raised in a breeding program was released near Wellington last November.

Experts say that could be the first time wild kiwis lived in the area in about a century, and so far, they seem to be thriving.

We did the first health check a couple of months later, and we're expecting them to, kind of, you know, hold weight or lose a bit of weight.

But the really pleasing result was that half of those birds had put on weight, including⏤one bird put on a whopping 400 grams.

So, it's like there's, yeah, plenty of food in the ladder out on these hills.

That's hopefully room to grow for New Zealand's national treasure and the national effort to save it.

All right, our final story takes us to America's Heartland,

where a fur baby is getting today's 10 out of 10 for winning this year's B.A.R.K. Ranger Superintendent of the Gateway Arch Park in St. Louis.

Meet the adorable Betty Faith, the 12-year-old Basset Hound taking the crown, adopted back in 2020 after being rescued from a tough breeding and hoarding situation.

Betty has a new leash on life as the top dog at Gateway Arch Park.

B.A.R.K. Ranger is a program run by the National Park Service,

and B.A.R.K. stands for: Bag your pet's waste, Always leash your pet, Respect wildlife, and Know where you can go.

That's pretty doggone sweet; congrats, Betty Faith.

We're giving a special shout out to Delaware Valley High School in Milford, Pennsylvania today.

And one other special shout out to Alex at Renfroe and Harper at Talley who watched CNN10 every day from Decatur, Georgia.

Well, their dad, Glenn Levy is our guest producer today; rise up!

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Spain’s Historic Drought | May 3, 2023

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