Last month was the hottest April for the past 40 years

It is definitely getting hotter and drier in the Balearics and last month, was the hottest April for the past 40 years and the water levels in the region have fallen by 50 per cent since the middle of the last century. The director of the Balearic Meteorological centre, Agusti Jansa, says that rainfall is drastically low and that all of the centre's weather stations across the region have reported extremely low levels of rainfall over the past month. What is more, with summer nearly upon us, May is not expected to be a wet month and natural reserves face the danger of being run dry during the first half of the summer. Across the board, temperatures in the Balearics rose by an average of between 2 and 2.5ºC last month. For example in the middle of the month the temperature at Palma airport reached 15ºC, beating the previous April record set in 1987. Temperatures in Lluc, one of the region's highest destinations and usually famous for enjoying the region's first snow falls each year, also showed a rise of over one degree centigrade. The last week of the month saw temperatures reach 28ºC, the highest for nearly ten years. Similar increases were also registered in Minorca and Ibiza, although Minorca did enjoy a considerable amount of more rain than its fellow islands. The top temperature registered last month was on April 22, when Sa Canova and Sa Pobla saw temperatures rise to 32ºC. The previous record was 30ºC in 1992. But while everybody is enjoying the sun and unusually high temperatures, the worrying statistics refer to the lack of rain.