Photos: Urmas Lauri
Precipitation and snow melting have raised the water in Estonian rivers. This year’s high water in Kasar has come in waves.
At the beginning of the week, the Kasari started to look like a river once more – the water rise that started last Thursday reached its maximum on Tuesday, with the water level rising by more than a meter during that time.
On February 18, the water level in the river was measured at 174 cm above the zero of the water measuring station, but by February 22, it had dropped to 82 cm. But then the water slowly started to rise once more. On February 26, there was 192 cm of water and this was also the record for this year’s high water. By noon on Wednesday, the water level had already dropped by 11 cm.
“It changes every day,” said Helle Veltman, information manager of the Matsalu National Park visitor center, “On Friday, the entire river in Penijõe was full of slush ice, the river was almost full. But on Monday, free water was already flowing. I don’t know where the ice went so quickly.”
In the monastery, according to Veltman, the ice was stuck behind the bridge over the weekend. Probably because of this, the gorge on the Läänemaa side of Matsalu was flooded more widely than usual. Along the Haapsalu-Laiküla road in the corner of Rannajõe village, the Kasari waters had already come quite close to the road. The confluence of the Rägina main ditch and the Rannamõisa river had already become part of the Kasari river.
However, the sea bays are still frozen. “The ice is still on Keemu Bay, nothing has happened there,” Veltman knew how to say.
The birds are here, “We have seen the first three Kiwi birds yesterday and today, we heard a lark already on Saturday, geese also since Saturday. The whooper swans are there, the song is heard, but it’s so foggy that we mightn’t see the birds,” Veltman reported bird news on Wednesday. “The signs of full spring are in the air.”
The highest February water level in Kasari, 229 cm, was recorded on February 20, 1995. The river water level in February was also high in 1990 and 1997.
The highest water level of the last 99 years, 249 cm, was recorded at Kasar on April 9, 1932, the lowest water level was on August 20, 1936, when the water level was only -9 cm.
Usually, there has been freezing on Kasari in the first week of April. When the water rose high at the end of March in 2019, the residents along the river considered it early, a year later the high water was still a month earlier, on February 18. But in 2023, high water arrived at Kasari exceptionally early, then the water level was 217 cm above zero at the water measuring station already on January 16.
2024-02-28 12:14:55
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