by EFAS Hydrological Data Collection Centre,

In March, the hydrological situation reveals a considerable number of stations exceeding their alert levels, mainly in the northeast of Europe, although the absolute value has decreased with respect to the previous month (106 vs 263). According to the number of stations affected, the Vistula basin stands out with 30 stations with values over their thresholds, which corresponds with the 40% of the stations with alert levels defined located on this basin, mainly in Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus. In the second place, with 26 stations, appears the Dnieper river basin (43% of stations located on this basin). The Danube basin stands out in third place with 20 stations (6% of its defined alert level stations) located in Germany and Switzerland. To a minor extent in terms of affected basins, we found stations in the Po (7), Oder (6), Neman (3), and Rhine (3) basins surpassing their alert levels. Finally, there are scattered stations in Spain, Norway, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iceland.

Regarding stations registering values above the 90% quantile, few stations (64) exceeded this value in March. As it was the case of the previous three months preceding, these are mostly located in the Scandinavian basins, where the vast majority of stations are located in Norway (27 stations), followed by stations in Sweden (12 stations), and then Finland (5 stations).To a minor extent, stations also surpassing the 90% quantile can be found in the Danube basin (Austria and Bulgaria) and the Vistula basin across Poland and Ukraine. A handful of stations exceeding the 90% quantile are located in the Dnieper and Rhine basins, in Ukraine and Switzerland, respectively. Isolated stations can be seen in Spain (Barbate basin), England (Thames basin), Belarus (Pripyat basin) and Ukraine (Dniester basin).

Finally, and according to those stations registering values below the 10% quantile, the number of stations involved, and their concentration has been reduced compared to the previous month. Focusing on the countries with a major presence of stations fulfilling this criterion, Spain has 4 stations spread throughout the Minho, Ebro, Llobregat and Verde basins, followed by Ukraine (Dnieper and Danube basins) and Germany (Elbe Rhine and Danube basins) with 3 stations each. Lastly, one station in Poland situated in the Oder basin experienced values under the 10% quantile.