Little rain for Europe's farmers before June

Daniel Fineren in Reuters: Drought in much of Europe looks set to continue with little relief for parched farmland until June at the earliest, forecasters say.

Parts of central Europe saw less than 40 percent of their long-term average rainfall from February to April, with even the wettest seeing less than 80 percent of the mean for 1951-2000, according to the Global Precipitation Climatology Center.

At the start of May, some weather watchers saw some rainfall relief by the end of the month from the long, dry spell that has desiccated large parts of Europe since January.

Patchy rain has moistened bits of northern Britain, France and Germany over the last few days, raising Rhine river levels and allowing some increase in trade….

This is cracked earth in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, but I'm using it as a stand-in. Shot by Vinod Panicker, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license